Lakelore took me a moment, but I got there in the end

 

Welcome to yet another book that fell into my lap without me remembering how I even found out about it, Lakelore by Anna-Marie McLemore. How I likely found out about this book was from Twitter, but I really couldn’t tell you. It just appeared in my atmosphere one day, so I read it.

Our blurb says that everyone who lives near the lake knows the stories about the world underneath it, an ethereal landscape rumoured to be half water, half air. But Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only ones who’ve been there. Bastián grew up above the lake and in the world beneath it, and Lore has seen the world underneath only once. Then the lines between the two worlds begin to blur as the world underneath spills into the world above. So, Bastián and Lore have to work together, despite having not spoken for seven years, if they want to stop it from spilling their secrets. Very slay.

The chapters in this book aren’t numbered, and the the book flits between Bastián and Lore pretty quickly. The first chapter in Bastián’s POV basically tells us that no one believes in the world below the lake anymore. Then it hops over to Lore’s POV, and they’re on a field trip, telling the reader about one of the worst mistakes they made, how it involved punching this boy and running away. Then when the two of them meet up, they get shown the world under the lake – someone besides Bastián ends up seeing it. Bastián also struggles just getting about in the world, so their brother teaches them to make alebrijes as a way to get out their frustrations, worries and anxieties, and Bastián end up flinging them into the lake as a way of coping, and lake brings them to life, but they never get to leave the lake – even though they try to.

I will say, there is then a brief tonal shift where the book stops feeling so floaty and mystical in the beginning when we get plopped into Bastián and Lore’s lives. It did catch me off guard for a second, because I didn’t realise that there was a time jump from when both Bastián and Lore were nine to when they were sixteen. I didn’t realise that at first and maybe wondered whether it was just meant to be getting into the vibes of flitting between two worlds, or two lives, since there is the world under the lake as well. And maybe that’s something that the author was going for and that I just missed in the moment.

Still, it drops us off, back in Bastián and Lore’s lives when they are sixteen. Bastián is starting testosterone, has ADHD, and Lore is seeing someone called ‘Amanda the Learning Specialist’, and they (Lore) also have dyslexia. But the two end up reuniting, as the blurb said, and this was the specific point where I realised that there had been a time jump after the time jump had actually happened. Like I mentioned, this might have been me being dumb and just missing it, or maybe it could have been clearer. However, that’s such a minor gripe. It was one of those moments where I was like, “Oh, we’ve changed. Okay”, and then just got on with the book in the new place.

I will say, Bastián and Lore’s personalities did take a little while to properly come out. It does make sense in the context of the story since they both do have a lot of fear instilled in them. They do slowly open up to each other as the story goes on, and their personalities do get more fleshed out as the pages go on. The first instance I noted down in terms of actually seeing a tangible character, instead of someone just gripped by fear was when the two reunite, and while they’re obviously tense around each other, Lore ends up giving Bastián a little bit of random trivia to ease the tension. And for me, I definitely started enjoying the two more, as characters, once their personalities really started to come out.

And I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet, but in terms of the lake world bleeding into the real world, there’s one example where Lore is just waiting around somewhere with a book. They open their book, and instead of pages with lines of words, they just see this dark, glittery blue, like the lake water.

I also don’t think that I’ve ever read a book where one of the main characters has dyslexia and it’s been an actual point in the story. It was really interesting to read about that, as it’s not particularly something I know about. Lore mentions in the book that they couldn’t explain what dyslexia is like, but they could explain what it was like, specifically, for them, and then there’s a two-three-page spread of Lore explaining in really specific detail. I know during my post about Lab Partners I did complain about the in-depth explanation of something, however, I feel like it’s different in Lakelore than it was for Lab Partners. With Lab Partners that in-depth explanation was about making spaghetti, which is something that most people can do, but when it comes to dyslexia, I suppose since Lore could only explain what it was like for them, that makes is more unique, and not something you’re going to be able to find elsewhere. You could only find it in this book. Whereas you can find an explanation on how to make spaghetti anywhere. (I still can’t believe Lab Partners spent pages talking about how to make fucking spaghetti of all things…)

So what wasn’t immediately clear to me was that this book is more so a coming-of-age story than anything else. To me, the coming-of-age genre revolves around younger characters learning major lessons. And that can either be about themselves, life, or the world. And even though the lake world leaking out into the real world is there in this book, it’s not so much about this lake world and more about Bastián and Lore growing up, learning and understanding themselves and their brains better.

I will say, weirdly, I don’t have all that much to say about this book, since it was about the characters learning to live with themselves, that’s kind of what it felt like, and by the time the ending came around, things that were a little fuzzy to me in the beginning finally made sense – and that goes for the characters as well. This book felt like, for lack of a better phrase, going on a hike, like how at the end of the hike you get to see a nice view. That’s how I want to put this book without spoiling anything.

And even though I’ve never done this in a post before, here was my favourite part of this book: “My bad days, they’re part of me. And the things I make, those are part of me too. Especially the things I made during the bad days, because they remind me that I still made something out of those bad days.”

Okay, bye!