I feel like I need to address that while this is being promoted as a gothic novel... it's much more gothic-adjacent. Some of the tropes are there, but not enough (in my opinion), to make this a full blown gothic fantasy.
Some of the tropes seem overly forced (case in point Rowan as a "monster", where this is brought up over and over again when it's fairly obvious that Rowan is the surviving victim of bad stuff that happened to his family). Leta herself is a hard character to spend time with. She's the "heroine" that is hyper focused on saving everyone to the point of causing harm. Her wanting to save her brother (and then Rowan) is repeated over and over and over again.
I found the setting intriguing and the overall problem was a good one. The side characters were interesting and a lot could have been done with Rowan's character. But Leta herself was boring and slightly obnoxious which made it difficult to fully engage with the narrative since it's told from her point of view.
Overall I felt like LAKESEDGE was a great concept, but that it could have done with some more editing.
Some of the tropes seem overly forced (case in point Rowan as a "monster", where this is brought up over and over again when it's fairly obvious that Rowan is the surviving victim of bad stuff that happened to his family). Leta herself is a hard character to spend time with. She's the "heroine" that is hyper focused on saving everyone to the point of causing harm. Her wanting to save her brother (and then Rowan) is repeated over and over and over again.
I found the setting intriguing and the overall problem was a good one. The side characters were interesting and a lot could have been done with Rowan's character. But Leta herself was boring and slightly obnoxious which made it difficult to fully engage with the narrative since it's told from her point of view.
Overall I felt like LAKESEDGE was a great concept, but that it could have done with some more editing.