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A review by salgalruns
The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
4.0
While I did enjoy this fast paced book, it really didn't grab me as much as I had hoped. It took me a while to pull all the characters together, as the book rotates back and forth between three different time periods and multiple people at each time period to boot. Trying to create your own family tree in your head gets a bit confusing until partway through when you're finally getting them settled.
The storyline is somewhat of a mystery - Nell finds out early on in the story that who she believes her parents to be is not actually the truth. You then find yourself whisked through time (1913ish, 1975ish, and present day) to discover who Nell's parents are and why it was that she ended up in Australia without them. I will give Morton credit though - I did enjoy each of the storylines, but it created a choppiness that was distracting at times, and I normally enjoy changing POVs.
The storyline with the forgotten garden is intriguing - a garden hidden at the end of a maze that appears to be quite magical. I loved the garden for its theraputic element and for the connection between all the generations.
There is one reason alone that I bumped this from a 3 to a 4, and that's because the author gave credit within the story to Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of [b:The Secret Garden|2998|The Secret Garden|Frances Hodgson Burnett|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327873635s/2998.jpg|3186437], which happens to be one of my favorite children's books. I also loved the emphasis on children's literature through fairy tales. Thus, a 4. ;)
The storyline is somewhat of a mystery - Nell finds out early on in the story that who she believes her parents to be is not actually the truth. You then find yourself whisked through time (1913ish, 1975ish, and present day) to discover who Nell's parents are and why it was that she ended up in Australia without them. I will give Morton credit though - I did enjoy each of the storylines, but it created a choppiness that was distracting at times, and I normally enjoy changing POVs.
The storyline with the forgotten garden is intriguing - a garden hidden at the end of a maze that appears to be quite magical. I loved the garden for its theraputic element and for the connection between all the generations.
There is one reason alone that I bumped this from a 3 to a 4, and that's because the author gave credit within the story to Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of [b:The Secret Garden|2998|The Secret Garden|Frances Hodgson Burnett|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327873635s/2998.jpg|3186437], which happens to be one of my favorite children's books. I also loved the emphasis on children's literature through fairy tales. Thus, a 4. ;)