Mistik Lake.

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Each new Martha Brooks novel offers readers the comfort of the familiar with the fresh delight of the unfamiliar. In this case, the familiar is twofold. Mistik Lake’s setting is again Manitoba, and its major characters are not just older adolescents but also adults. Obviously, the unfamiliar is provided by the new plotline, to which can be added the structure Brooks utilizes to unify the novel.

Mistik Lake is divided into three parts labelled “Winter,” “Spring,” and “Summer,” with the first season, winter, occupying almost half the book’s length. In turn, the sections are divided into a total of 23 titled chapters that each bear the name of one of three people from whose perspective the total tale is told—Odella, Jimmy, and Gloria.

Odella McLean is the 17-year-old eldest daughter of Sally, who, at age 16, was the sole survivor when a car containing four teens went through the lake ice near the rural community of Mistik Lake. When Odella was 15, Sally abandoned her husband and three daughters in Winnipeg to follow a man to Iceland. Jimmy Tomasson, 18, a lifelong resident of Mistik Lake, is someone who loves Odella, his affection being entirely reciprocated. Aunt Gloria, Odella’s maternal septuagenarian great-aunt, lives in Toronto, owns a cabin at Mistik Lake that she never uses, and visits the McLean family annually. Family secrets and forbidden love will make Mistik Lake irresistible to older teen female readers, and a second copy of this crossover novel should be added to the adult section. Highly recommended.