Lake Rules

by Maureen Garvie

A summer mystery, set on the shores of a Northern Ontario lake. Thirteen-year-old Leia Greenway can hardly believe her luck! First, her mother finally agreed to buy the old cottage on Lake Wasamak. And now, her brothers, Tim and Hugo, have come down with the chicken pox. Since neither of the boys can finish the school year, the entire family is getting a jump on the summer break! On theirfirst day at the cottage, Leia meets Cass Marlan-a spunky, outdoorsy, environmentally-conscious girl whose family has been summering at Wasamak for generations. Before long, the Greenways are embroiled in Cass's plan to save a piece of land-known locally as the old Indian village-from development. But it's no easy task. Not only do they need to prove that the Indian village actually existed, Leia, Cass, Tim, and Hugo must also fight against local business interests and some less-than-friendly characters, including a sullen boy who's staying at the biggest, fanciest cottage on the lake.

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 10, 2005

About the author

Maureen Garvie is a young adult author who also teaches writing to young adults. She was born in Kingston, Ontario, and grew up beside the St. Lawrence River, swimming and canoeing around wrecks of ships from the War of 1812. At university she worked at Fort Henry during the summer, where she developed a fascination with history that went beyond soldiers in red coats.

After finishing her education at Western, Queen's and University of Toronto with Masters, teaching and library degrees, she married and moved to New Zealand. For 12 years she worked on farms and in libraries on the South Island, taught English and drama in Christchurch, and wrote.

Now back in Canada, Maureen lives in Kingston once more. In the golden days before Hollinger and Conrad Black, she worked as a writer and editor for the Kingston Whig-Standard and has reviewed children’s fiction for Quill & Quire for many years. She is now an instructor at Queen's University's Writing Centre and an editor for McGill-Queen's University Press. She has a daughter, Leila, who is an amazing knitter.

Reviews

[Brittney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book 5 or 6 times before 2013, back when I didn't keep track of when I read books. So four-ish years since I last read it I didn't enjoy it as much as 13 year old me did but I still loved this cute little book (but GOD IS CASS EVER ANNOYING) and it felt like going home!

[Cindy L · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a cute story. More of a young adult mystery story not terribly exciting.

[Daniel Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fine, well-intentioned young adult novel but unfortunately, one that doesn't age well; while its goal seems to be to get the youngest generation of settler Canadians to respect and help preserve Indigenous history, some moments of cliché, whitesplaining and cultural appropriation made me cringe. There's still a long way to go if we're ever going make this relationship right, but silver lining, I guess, this book showed me that in the short time since 2005, we might have made some progress: I don't think a settler Canadian would write a book like this in 2022.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cute and simple book but I did put it down for almost a full year and then picked it up again to finish.

[Janice Albert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Young adult but without a lot of substance, story or character - not particularly fun or interesting

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh, is my overall rating. Decent enough story. None of the characters really made an impression on me and Cass down right pissed me off. This isn't even really a coming of age story. With all this being said it is a good story about perseverance and falling through on your true beliefs.

[Jessie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really hoping for a fun and adventurous novel but what I got instead was 223 pages of boring.