Under the Lake

 

I just read Underlake by Kia Heavey. It's an enjoyable paranormal romance, with decent morals and lovely evocation of rural lakeside summers. It does have a significant flaw, which I discuss below, but I had to draw this fanart because it answered a wish I never thought would be granted!

In Twilight: New Moon, (referring to the film; I never read the book) there's the scene where Bella went cliff-diving and hit her head and starts sinking, and an apparition of Edward floats up from the depths. My sister and I always thought that image suggested a better story, where he's the ghost of a drowned man, pale in the dark cold water. Well Underlake was that story!

Spoiler Warning for the following.

The best parts were descriptions of the lake, both above in the warmth and light of summer and below when John and Katie are magically suspended between life and death in winter.

But it did have a big flaw. When the time comes to return to the depths, Katie refuses to keep her promise. And we are only really given selfish reasons for that, but for some unexplained reason that's what breaks the spell and resumes the flow of time for John. That doesn't fit with the moral framework of a Cupid & Psyche/Beauty & the Beast story, which it is. In those tales, the woman breaks the spell on the man by ultimately keeping her promise, even if she broke it at first. It would have been much better if Katie was willing to go back under the ice, but then she started drowning, and John took her out despite believing doing so would cause his own death. That would have been a perfect redemption for his earlier act of suicide, and then their complementary sacrifices could have broken the spell, rather than her unwillingness to sacrifice!