The Secret Lake: A children's mystery adventure (Secret Lake Mystery Adventures)

Imagine, being with your younger sibling just playing in the forest and finding a secret lake, going through a tunnel to climb a ladder leading you to travel back in time. Well, that's exactly what happens in “The Secret Lake” By Karen Inglis. A common theme throughout the whole book is to never talk to strangers. This is shown when they find this old lady and talk to her then the old lady attempts to poison them. This also occurs when they find a guy who turned out to be extremely rude to them. This book is about how siblings explore around their garden and then find a lake in the forest, they find a time traveling tunnel and they go inside it and are taken back 100 years in the past. Tom and Stella found the secret lake; they thought it was beautiful because it was surrounded by crimson pink flowering bushes, stretching away in front of them. This book would appeal to people who enjoy the Sci-Fi genre, as it shows time travel, super power, myths, and a theme of multiple lives. Some good parts of the book are when they find the lake and when they meet a nice guy and he talks weirdly. Some areas where the book could improve on is adding more background knowledge on the kids at some point. I appreciated how the author made it realistic like the details when the people spoke. It was a good read because it had good writing and also good personalities for the characters that made it more interesting. My overall opinion is that this was a very good book. I recommend this book as it piques your interest while reading about the journey of Tom and Stella.It’s always fun to read books about adventures and time travel. Learning about history can be fun and in this book it places you into a different time and provides a different perspective. Afterall, if you don't learn something new every day, its a wasted day.

The Secret Lake is a wonderful children’s adventure story filled with mystery, friendship, and just the right touch of magic. Karen Inglis weaves a tale that is both exciting and heartwarming as siblings Stella and Tom discover a secret lake behind their new home—one that transports them back in time. The time-travel twist is imaginative and keeps kids turning the pages, while the characters feel real and relatable. My child loved following Stella and Tom’s adventures, and the gentle suspense made it hard to put the book down. It’s engaging without being too scary, which makes it perfect for middle-grade readers. This book is a fantastic choice for kids who enjoy mysteries, adventures, or stories with a little history woven in. A modern classic that children will want to reread again and again. Highly recommend!

Great book for a young reader our granddaughter loved it

Twenty words or less... Hum... Hum... Hum.. Yep... Yep... Yep... I see... I see... I see Hum Yep I see this is such a grade school mid school book but is interesting though and I needed a time filler so giving high four

We have a mother-daughter book club for 9-11 year old girls and our group read this book this month. The girls really loved the book, but what made this the best book club event was that we booked a zoom meeting with Karen through her website. She met with us and our girls for an hour and shared a bunch of slides all about how she got inspired to write her stories, what it's like to be an author, and the amazing story behind her self-publishing of the Secret Lake. Her story is incredible! And she was so kind and sweet to our girls and answered all their questions they had for her. Highly recommend booking a call with her if you're looking for an inspiring behind-the-scenes experience to excite your kids about reading and writing!

I got these for some advanced readers in 2nd grade. Terrific story, interesting characters in a mystery. The kids really enjoyed.

My granddaughter and I loved this adventure/mystery story and were thrilled to discover there are two more in the series!

I think the sheer volume of reviews and the fact that it was referred to as a “modern day classic” in the description built this book up more than was warranted. As a writer myself, I hate leaving less than five star reviews because I know the vast amount of work that goes into publishing, but just wanted to throw my two cents out there. I read this aloud with my 11-year-old son, and at the end we looked at each other and both said “Huh.” We didn’t feel terribly connected to the characters, and so we had very little reason to care about what was going on. We were waiting for something big to happen at the end, and that moment never came. Rather, the big reveal at the end wasn’t anything we were made to anticipate or care about. There were also questions left unanswered, and that’s difficult for me as a reader. There’s a very strange thing that happens throughout the book and I was looking forward to finding out why at the end, but it was never explained. Overall, it was fine, but unfortunately we won’t be returning to it as we would a true modern day classic.

My 8 year old daughter enjoyed it. She read it just a few weeks after we watched Back to the future series on Prime Video, so when she told me what the story was, she started with “it was just like Back to the future”.

Well, we all very much enjoyed this book - grandma and grandpa and 9- and 11-year-old grandchildren. It's a great, attention-grabbing story with a really novel and intriguing central idea and a great twist at the end and the only reservation we have is that that idea is actually quite complicated and even our bright 9-year-old (and occasionally the two of us!) had to stop and think for a few moments to make sure we knew what was going on, so it would probably be lost on most 7- or 8-year-olds. With regard to its length, it’s a short story and ‘accusations’ of pamphlet size are totally unjustified - admittedly we read it in pretty short bursts but it took more than a couple of weeks to read it, with occasional double sessions in a day. Although in no way did they detract from the enjoyment , there are one or two aspects about the book that left us wondering. Why is it called “The Secret Lake”? The lake does play a continuous part in the story but quite incidentally and the book would better be titled “The Time Tunnel”. But maybe there’s already a book of that name. And a few loose ends were left dangling, for example, how did the boat come to be buried in the mound? But the strangest thing is the random, irregular and (happily!) very infrequent introduction of allusions to social media. The storytelling is essentially timeless - it could have been written in the 50s, or earlier, or later - and these odd (in every sense) nods to the 21st century are so occasional and with the exception of one key moment so unnecessary to the story, that it almost looks as if they were dropped in to make the story more current after it was finished in a sans-technology form. But in our view it is a five-star read.

My 11-year-old son loves these books. The stories are engaging, easy to follow, and keep him excited to read. He always looks forward to the next book in the series. Highly recommended for children who enjoy mystery and adventure.

Enjoyed this childrens’ story about two children and a dog a lot, reminded me of Tom’s midnight garden and Hattie.

The secret lake felt nice to read, and to me the characters had lots of charisma, that’s very nice to see in a book. Although there were quite a few names to be noted (well, it is a mystery after all), and children can get a bit lost, it isn’t so overwhelming. Kids will relate to the main characters, and this book is wonderful to English as second language learners too, as there are expressions and terms good to learn without being overwhelming. It has a sensitive theme at the end, but it barely gets looked on, so I think it’s appropriate to kids. Although I would prefer to see more moments of friendship throughout the book so that the old era characters get more memorable, I think it was quite good! I recommend it for any kids or adults who like mysteries, and time travel!