Finished The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton. I received a copy from the publisher. In the interest of full disclosure, I work for a company that’s related to Simon & Schuster.
Summary (from Goodreads):
“1959 England. Laurel Nicolson is sixteen years old, dreaming alone in her childhood tree house during a family celebration at their home, Green Acres Farm. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and then observes her mother, Dorothy, speaking to him. And then she witnesses a crime.
Fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress, living in London. She returns to Green Acres for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday and finds herself overwhelmed by memories and questions she has not thought about for decades. She decides to find out the truth about the events of that summer day and lay to rest her own feelings of guilt. One photograph, of her mother and a woman Laurel has never met, called Vivian, is her first clue.
The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams, the lengths some people go to fulfill them, and the strange consequences they sometimes have. It is a story of lovers, friends, dreamers and schemers, play-acting and deception told against a backdrop of events that changed the world.”
I love Kate Morton’s books. They’re tremendously well-written and pull me in within the first few sentences. This one especially lured me in. Most of it is set during World War II and while I’m sure I wouldn’t REALLY have wanted to experience life in London during that war, it seemed so exciting and…well, fun.
Even beyond that, though, I was reading to find out what exactly was going on between Dorothy and Vivien. (Yes, I was curious about why Dorothy—Laurel’s mom—killed the man but the relationship between Dorothy and Vivien was very compelling.)
All of Kate Morton’s books are worth reading, but this is easily her best yet. Highly recommended.
