Lake News is the story of Lily Blake whose passion is for music and for performing. She has a comfortable, if not extravagant, life in Boston where she teaches music at a private school and moonlights as a singer in a posh dinner club. All that changes when an off-the-record conversation with a reporter about her friend, a newly promoted Cardinal in the Catholic church, is twisted into a libelous front page story of her supposed affair with the Cardinal. Suddenly, Lily's life is crumbling around her as countless reporters hound her and dismantle the reputation she has worked so hard to build for herself in Boston. Before long the negative publicity drives both her bosses to fire her, and she becomes a virtual prisoner in her apartment where even her neighbors are in a fury at the hoards of reporters laying siege to her building. Soon, Lily knows she has no choice but to return to the small hometown she wanted nothing more than to escape. But what will she find on the shores of Lake Henry? Will the denizens of her old town protect her or turn on her? Will she be able to patch up longstanding problems with her mother? And why does John Kipling, editor of the town's weekly Lake News, keep turning up? Is he looking for a story? Or is it something more?

This is not the sort of book that it takes rocket science to figure out. As a matter of fact, I'm sure you can guess just about all the answers to my questions. That said, though, I actually quite liked this book. Both Lily and John are fully fleshed out characters struggling with scars from the past and hurts from the present, each looking to somehow prove their worth to themselves and to their still difficult parents. It's easy (or perhaps I mean difficult?) to feel Lily's pain as her life is stolen out from under her based solely on lies and easy to know her uncertainty about how to go about remedying the situation. Lake Henry and its citizens are good-hearted, close-mouthed when it counts, and refreshingly quaint in that small town way. Delinsky's story has a great flow, unloading bits of intrigue and leaving a trail of romantic encounters between John and Lily that carries readers along to its satisfying conclusion. Lake News is a refreshingly good story that leaves you feeling quite fulfilled. ( )

I got very emotionally involved with this. . . . maybe I'm really a romantic at heart? Surely not! Cynic is my middle name!! ( )

Hard to read someone's life being torn apart by something not their fault. I almost couldn't read anymore. It got better though. ( )