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A review by krisrid
The Book of Secrets by Tom Harper
3.0
This was another book that had a very good, cleverly conceived story and engaging characters, but was too long, and padded with extraneous and, in my opinion, unnecessary details to be an excellent book.
This is another book with two stories - one in the past and another in the present - which are told in parallel in alternating chapters. The way the story was spun out was very good. The characters were interesting, the events that went on were, for the most part quite exciting and suspenseful, especially the current-day story-line.
However, the past story-line - and I am not going to say too much to avoid any spoilers - included far to much detail, and felt as though the author was throwing in the proverbial "everything but the kitchen sink" in terms of what happened to the main character in that story. Many of the characters in the past story-line are real people, but there is very little verifiable detail known about what actually happened to them, so while I am willing to cut the author some slack in creating a fictional story around real people, there are limits to even my avid-reading credulity, and in the past story-line, the author pushed me past what I was willing to accept.
The book could have been shorter, by 100-200 pages, without losing any of the key plot-points, and I feel that it would have been a better book with a stronger flow, and less need to skim over descriptions of the lakes, the buildings, etc. that were frequent and unnecessary for moving the story along.
A good read, but not a great read. Still if you enjoy historical fiction, you may want to give this a try.
This is another book with two stories - one in the past and another in the present - which are told in parallel in alternating chapters. The way the story was spun out was very good. The characters were interesting, the events that went on were, for the most part quite exciting and suspenseful, especially the current-day story-line.
However, the past story-line - and I am not going to say too much to avoid any spoilers - included far to much detail, and felt as though the author was throwing in the proverbial "everything but the kitchen sink" in terms of what happened to the main character in that story. Many of the characters in the past story-line are real people, but there is very little verifiable detail known about what actually happened to them, so while I am willing to cut the author some slack in creating a fictional story around real people, there are limits to even my avid-reading credulity, and in the past story-line, the author pushed me past what I was willing to accept.
The book could have been shorter, by 100-200 pages, without losing any of the key plot-points, and I feel that it would have been a better book with a stronger flow, and less need to skim over descriptions of the lakes, the buildings, etc. that were frequent and unnecessary for moving the story along.
A good read, but not a great read. Still if you enjoy historical fiction, you may want to give this a try.