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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
Oh I am so sad that I didn’t love this book... Kate Morton is my favorite but to me this was not one of her best. I loved Joanne Froggatt’s narration. I loved that it took place in Victorian times, but the story itself fell flat for me. Just when I thought it was getting better or a twist was revealed it just seemed to leave me like
An engaging, well-written story. A great summer read.
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
This book had great potential and an interesting plot but it was just too long with too many characters. I had some issues keeping track of who was who and the jumping around was disjointed, I'd find myself having a hard time remembering where a certain plot point left off when Morton finally got back to the present. After all the details and all the build up the ending felt rushed and I'm particularly annoyed at some of the ambiguity and unanswered questions. This would have been better if it had been about 150 pages shorter, I think. Recommended with reservations for Morton fans.
Loved this book. It wove different time periods into a compelling story.
Love how Kate Morton weaves a story, and I will continue to read her books, but this one felt overly complicated. Rats!
Kate Morton has been one of my favorite authors since high school, when I first discovered her work. This latest novel does not disappoint in the slightest. It is that very specific brand of ghost story meets mystery meets historical fiction that I particularly enjoy, and like her other novels, it weaves the threads of various perspectives (and time periods- Victorian to present) into a beautifully intricate tapestry. My head is still marveling at the plot twists that are so masterfully constructed. Whimsical, rich, and intensely satisfying, this is the perfect book to curl up with on a rainy afternoon, cup of tea at the ready.
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5/5
Oof, this TRULY pains me because I have become such a Kate Morton evangelist over the years. Her books have moved me, made me cry, stuck with me, made me literally GASP in realization of where a story was headed. So I brought all of those big expectations into this latest book. I mean, I’ve taken them into pretty much every book of hers since the first one, which didn’t grab me until the very end and made me a Morton believer. So I always hold out faith that Kate Morton will come through with an eleventh-hour twist and that the entire book will tie up in a gloriously intricate knot. But to be truly honest, that intricate knot sort of felt like a tangle by the end.
This book is hugely ambitious, something I would certainly expect from such a master of convoluted plots. There are so many characters, so many timelines, but just like I felt about her debut, The House at Riverton, I felt like she was trying too hard to tie everything up too neatly. EVERYONE had to be related. Everyone who had a connection to the house also had a connection to every single recent resident. EVERYTHING was a big twisty secret. Sometimes, less is in fact more, and I think a deeper mystery and fewer “gotcha” connections would have made this feel more engaging.
Usually what I love most about Kate Morton’s books is the very delicate interplay between past and present. But Elodie, our foothold in the near present, takes such a backseat to the multiple generations of family stories that I kept losing track of her purpose in the story. The whole thing is spurred by her discovery of the satchel, but we never get to see the satchel actually making it to Stratton, who is in fact Pale Joe, Lily/Birdie’s childhood friend. This seemed like a pretty major piece of the puzzle to leave to imagination, especially with just about every other plot thread being tied up and twisted back into the narrative of the house. Honestly, I think I could have done without the deep dive into Leonard’s backstory, and focused less on Juliet and more on Tip. Any one of these stories could have been great on their own, but GOSH there were so many of them. I really wanted to feel that lovely tug on my heartstrings of a secret being revealed, of everything coming together, but I just didn’t feel it with this book. I was more exhausted by the end, frantically combing back through Q&As and summaries to make sure I actually understood who everyone was and how they were related. I know that unhappy relationships were a constant thread throughout the novel, but it didn’t seem necessary to me that Elodie was the product of an affair between her mother and the violinist, and that her marriage to Winston was a cover that eventually turned into love? Why did she even need a cover in the first place — this wasn’t 1860 — especially since Elodie doesn’t actually seem to ever find this out directly, so she just ends up engaged to Alastair (whom she doesn’t love) and is almost doomed to make the wrong choice (with just vague warnings from Tip about being unhappy) before she coincidentally meets Jack, and will presumably dump Alastair a few weeks before the wedding? Why did Lauren feel the need to break up with her lover at the house from a story her grandmother told her? What was the photographer even doing there to be able to see them in the graveyard to take the photo that coincidentally ends up in Elodie’s hands by way of Pippa? PHEW.
I did really enjoy the love story between Edward and Lily, and would have loved to spend more time in that world, and follow through with Edward. I can see the purpose of having Lucy be the conduit — her guilt over what happened is very reminiscent of the end of Atonement when Briony comes to terms with how her actions devastated so many lives — but again, with so many characters floated about with connections to be made, it just felt like a distraction. Usually Kate Morton’s books immaculately tie together every loose end and make you realize that a tiny detail was in fact crucial later on, but a lot of the details in this book felt patched together, and some of them seemed to open up plot holes...like even if Lucy didn’t say anything about the priest hole and hiding Lily, how did nobody who went to the house to investigate, including Edward, not smell a corpse rotting in the heat of summer? How coincidental that Lucy happens to hit her head and immediately get enough amnesia to not remember what happened to tell the officers — I’ll cop to her guiltily staying quiet once she realizes what happened — but I didn’t buy it in the moment. And how did a the Radcliffe Blue not move further downriver after decades and stay close enough for Ada to find it. How did Ada, who couldn’t swim, get saved by finding the necklace? Are we meant to believe it was Birdie’s ghost, or did the other girl pull her out? I did find Birdie’s ghostly narration quite hauntingly lovely (pun fully intended) but that feels like supernatural stretch...
I had heard mixed things about this book from many trusted readers who love Morton’s work, but I truly did hope that my opinion would differ. I was still moved by many parts of this book, and Morton is as gorgeous a writer as ever, but I almost wanted her to be LESS ambitious with this one. Let her gorgeous settings and a smaller cast of characters do the work for the book. This definitely doesn’t change my opinions on Morton’s wonderful earlier books, and I’lll still keep recommending her enthusiastically, though this one may have a bit of an asterisk next to it. It’s definitely my least favorite of her books just by virtue of it not sticking the landing in the way I’ve come to expect from her. Alas! After a run of five brilliant books, I guess I was a bit too hopeful that her particular kind of magic was just a given.
Oof, this TRULY pains me because I have become such a Kate Morton evangelist over the years. Her books have moved me, made me cry, stuck with me, made me literally GASP in realization of where a story was headed. So I brought all of those big expectations into this latest book. I mean, I’ve taken them into pretty much every book of hers since the first one, which didn’t grab me until the very end and made me a Morton believer. So I always hold out faith that Kate Morton will come through with an eleventh-hour twist and that the entire book will tie up in a gloriously intricate knot. But to be truly honest, that intricate knot sort of felt like a tangle by the end.
This book is hugely ambitious, something I would certainly expect from such a master of convoluted plots. There are so many characters, so many timelines, but just like I felt about her debut, The House at Riverton, I felt like she was trying too hard to tie everything up too neatly. EVERYONE had to be related. Everyone who had a connection to the house also had a connection to every single recent resident. EVERYTHING was a big twisty secret. Sometimes, less is in fact more, and I think a deeper mystery and fewer “gotcha” connections would have made this feel more engaging.
Usually what I love most about Kate Morton’s books is the very delicate interplay between past and present. But Elodie, our foothold in the near present, takes such a backseat to the multiple generations of family stories that I kept losing track of her purpose in the story. The whole thing is spurred by her discovery of the satchel, but we never get to see the satchel actually making it to Stratton, who is in fact Pale Joe, Lily/Birdie’s childhood friend. This seemed like a pretty major piece of the puzzle to leave to imagination, especially with just about every other plot thread being tied up and twisted back into the narrative of the house. Honestly, I think I could have done without the deep dive into Leonard’s backstory, and focused less on Juliet and more on Tip. Any one of these stories could have been great on their own, but GOSH there were so many of them. I really wanted to feel that lovely tug on my heartstrings of a secret being revealed, of everything coming together, but I just didn’t feel it with this book. I was more exhausted by the end, frantically combing back through Q&As and summaries to make sure I actually understood who everyone was and how they were related. I know that unhappy relationships were a constant thread throughout the novel, but it didn’t seem necessary to me that Elodie was the product of an affair between her mother and the violinist, and that her marriage to Winston was a cover that eventually turned into love? Why did she even need a cover in the first place — this wasn’t 1860 — especially since Elodie doesn’t actually seem to ever find this out directly, so she just ends up engaged to Alastair (whom she doesn’t love) and is almost doomed to make the wrong choice (with just vague warnings from Tip about being unhappy) before she coincidentally meets Jack, and will presumably dump Alastair a few weeks before the wedding? Why did Lauren feel the need to break up with her lover at the house from a story her grandmother told her? What was the photographer even doing there to be able to see them in the graveyard to take the photo that coincidentally ends up in Elodie’s hands by way of Pippa? PHEW.
I did really enjoy the love story between Edward and Lily, and would have loved to spend more time in that world, and follow through with Edward. I can see the purpose of having Lucy be the conduit — her guilt over what happened is very reminiscent of the end of Atonement when Briony comes to terms with how her actions devastated so many lives — but again, with so many characters floated about with connections to be made, it just felt like a distraction. Usually Kate Morton’s books immaculately tie together every loose end and make you realize that a tiny detail was in fact crucial later on, but a lot of the details in this book felt patched together, and some of them seemed to open up plot holes...like even if Lucy didn’t say anything about the priest hole and hiding Lily, how did nobody who went to the house to investigate, including Edward, not smell a corpse rotting in the heat of summer? How coincidental that Lucy happens to hit her head and immediately get enough amnesia to not remember what happened to tell the officers — I’ll cop to her guiltily staying quiet once she realizes what happened — but I didn’t buy it in the moment. And how did a the Radcliffe Blue not move further downriver after decades and stay close enough for Ada to find it. How did Ada, who couldn’t swim, get saved by finding the necklace? Are we meant to believe it was Birdie’s ghost, or did the other girl pull her out? I did find Birdie’s ghostly narration quite hauntingly lovely (pun fully intended) but that feels like supernatural stretch...
I had heard mixed things about this book from many trusted readers who love Morton’s work, but I truly did hope that my opinion would differ. I was still moved by many parts of this book, and Morton is as gorgeous a writer as ever, but I almost wanted her to be LESS ambitious with this one. Let her gorgeous settings and a smaller cast of characters do the work for the book. This definitely doesn’t change my opinions on Morton’s wonderful earlier books, and I’lll still keep recommending her enthusiastically, though this one may have a bit of an asterisk next to it. It’s definitely my least favorite of her books just by virtue of it not sticking the landing in the way I’ve come to expect from her. Alas! After a run of five brilliant books, I guess I was a bit too hopeful that her particular kind of magic was just a given.
Probably 4 stars for the beautiful writing and 2 stars for the plot