The Girl in the Lake by India Hill Brown
Three out of Five Magical Coffee Cups
Celeste is spending two weeks at her grandparents lake house. This should be a fun trip but Celeste knows this is a way to get her into the lake to swim. Celeste has also recently failed her swim test. In her family that is a big deal, swimming is important to her family! I can understand wanting your child to know how to swim, even if they don’t like it, they should know how to keep their head above water.
The book does mention some history to help explain why swimming is important to this family. The family is Black and the grandparents remember times when Black people weren’t allowed in public pools so they never had the opportunity to learn. I knew some of the history but not the details. I love history so I enjoyed learning about all of this. Well, I’m not sure I would say I enjoyed it because these were awful things that happened but it was good for me to learn about it. There are also parts in this book when the family faces racism, I want to say randomly because it felt random but at the same time, I am a white woman so it might not be that random. Celeste’s grandfather brings her to the community pool and they are immediately approached by a woman who wants proof they belong there. It was weird, but again, it could just be something I haven’t seen/experienced in my life as a white woman.
After dinner the first night at the lake house, Grandma shows the kids a photo of her sister Celestine. They know she died at a young age but they don’t know how she died. Celeste is also shocked to see how much she looks like her great aunt. Like, they could be twins.
Things start happening over the week. Celeste’s cousins start to accuse her of pranking them when she hasn’t even been in the same room. It becomes clear pretty quickly that the ghost of Celestine is hanging around but why is she causing all of this chaos? Why is she pranking them? Does she want to hurt them? Does it have something to do with the way she died? I was really concerned that Celestine was a bad kid and she was trying to hurt these kids. Maybe she was angry about how she died?
It was a bit of a rushed end but explained a lot. I will still probably stay away from lakes.
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