Is The Lake House by James Patterson appropriate for teens?

Question

if not, then why?

Answer 1

Hi - you can make up your own mind - here is a review and this book is a sequel.

James Patterson’s latest thriller THE LAKE HOUSE is a sequel to his 11th book WHEN THE W IND BLOWS resuming the agonising ordeal of a group of winged children, mutants who have been adopted by veterinarian Dr.’Frannie’ O’Neill and Thomas ‘Kit’ Brennan a lawyer and former FBI agent. The six junior ‘birdmen’ are led my Max a beautiful young girl and in the opening pages O’Neill and Brennan lose custody of the unorthodox flock to the children’s natural parents. The media hound these ‘freaks’ who lives are constantly at risk and who are bullied by ‘normal’ kids whilst their birth parents fail entirely to understand the true nature and origin of their curious offspring. For behind the scenes lurks a callous murderous modern-day Dr.Frankenstein.

The evil genius who is responsible for this dizzying circus is Dr.Ethan Kane, Chief of Surgery at Liberty General Hospital and a monster in keeping with H.G.Wells’ Dr. Moreau pursuing his appalling Resurrection Project. A madman who will stop at nothing to realise his demented lifework. He wants to kidnap the flock but is frustrated by Max their leader. As usual with such larger-than-life villains Dr. Kane never invites suspicion as he slaughters the innocent in his operating theatre with impunity.

A Steven Spielberg type update of James Barrie’s classic PETER PAN Patterson’s new novel is far too strenuous in its unconvincing efforts to tune into the teen zeitgeist of modern America wanting desperately to ‘humanise’ these feisty mutants and bring their curious co-existence with humans into a recognizable day-to-day perspective. But the adults surrounding them are all paper-thin stock figures in the most dumbed-down Stephen King- Dean Koontz manner of storytelling and they fail to convince the reader of either their goodwill or their malice. Author Patterson suggests that these fictional events he depicts so prosaically could actually take place in our own lifetimes. His narrative and dialogue would have to be a great deal more eloquent and his characters a great deal more articulate to persuade me for a single second that this could be plausible in the slightest degree.