the lake house kate morton review new york times

The family is gathering at Greenacres farm for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday. Now, fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress living in London. A crime that challenges everything she knows about her family and especially her mother, Dorothy-her vivacious, loving, nearly perfect mother. Before the afternoon is over, Laurel will witness a shocking crime. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and watches as her mother speaks to him. RELATED: Exploring the French Riviera with Marco Polo Guides About The Secret Keeperĭuring a summer party at the family farm in the English countryside, sixteen-year-old Laurel Nicolson has escaped to her childhood tree house and is happily dreaming of the future. The perfect book for a dismal afternoon read, Kate Morton has further cemented her status as a truly wonderful teller of stories. The Secret Keeper is a beautifully written book that explores secrets, guilt and the fine line between dreams and reality. Now in her sixties, Laurel is trying to piece together the events that led to the horrific crime she witnessed as an innocent teenager. It is there that she meets and falls in love with Jimmy, and she makes the acquaintance of the rich and glamorous Vivien, wife of famous novelist Henry Jenkins. The Secret Keeper is also set in 1930s London, when a young Dorothy has left her family behind to work in London as a lady’s companion.

The police arrive and the matter is dealt with, but it is many decades before Laurel uncovers her mother’s hidden past and the real reason a man was murdered. The story opens on a summer’s day in Suffolk in 1961 when sixteen year old Laurel witnesses the murder of a man at the hands of her mother, Dorothy, unbeknown to the rest of her family. Much like her previous books, The Secret Keeper spans a triple time frame that is cleverly interwoven as the plot progresses.

I’ve read and enjoyed her three previous novels The House at Riverton, The Forgotten Garden and The Distant Hours and so, much like when I work my way through other authors’ bodies of work, I had high hopes for Kate Morton’s latest tome. While much of November was spent in a haze of late nights, early mornings and repetitive strain injury as a result of my constant writing, I did thankfully manage to squeeze in some bookish time to read The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton.

The lake house kate morton review new york times