Review: "Needle Lake" by Justine Champine

Needle Lake by Justine Champine
Published December 2025 via The Dial Press
★★★★

Oregon in the 90s: Ida's life is comfortable enough, even if she's never quite felt that she fits in this world. Growing up with neurodiversity—in a time when neurodiversity in girls was overlooked and wildly underdiagnosed—she takes refuge in her routines and her maps, in her illicit hikes up to swim alone in a lake. But when Idea's cousin Elna is sent up from San Francisco to stay with Ida and her mother, everything changes.

I've seen a lot of "mystery" tags for this, but it's no mystery; there are family secrets, yes, but mostly this is a story about growing up and coming of age and stretching one's wings and figuring out what family means. Ida is a compelling, if quiet, character, frustrated less by the ways in which she perceives the world than by the fact that so many people around her want her to change in ways that she doesn't really understand.

It's clear from early on that Elna is from a different world than Ida, emotionally and socially. She doesn't necessarily understand Ida any better than anyone else, but her reactions are at least different than Ida is used to, and Ida finds herself drawn to Elna, like a moth to a flame.

The book goes in a direction that I didn't see coming, but it's done quietly right up until the climax—plenty of things before that could create conflict, tbut they more often just add to characterization, or Ida's understanding of another character (related, but not quite the same thing), or Ida's understanding of how things fit together. This also feels like something that could only have been written has historical fiction (I cringe to write this; so odd to think of the approximate time I grew up as being grounds for historical fiction now), because even if better understanding of neurodiversity hasn't translated into an easier time for everyone, there is better understanding. Today, Ida would at least have a chance at school support and friends who were conversant in neurodiversity; she'd have the Internet at her fingertips and a better sense that she is not alone.

I went into this knowing very little about what to expect, and it turned out to be a quiet and gripping story. Don't pick it up expecting a thriller; do pick it up for the quiet intensity and a perspective not heard often enough.

Thanks to the author and publisher for inviting me to read a review copy through NetGalley.