Forgotten for a reason?

The Forgotten Garden: Kate Morton, 2009

This novel begins with a little girl on a boat bound for Australia in 1913. She has been left there by "The Authoress" and told not to move until she is back. Then we move on to Brisbane in 1930 at the same girl's 21st birthday where she learns that she was found as a small child. Then we jump again to 2005 and the young girl is lying in hospital bed about to take her last breath as an old woman. Upon her death her granddaughter Cassandra discovers her grandmother's secret and decides to unearth her family's past history. Throughout this novel we follow Nell's life but it is primarily through Cassandra searching in the present to find the truth about her grandmother's parentage, and through the family that she left behind in England in the early 1900s.

This story is rife with drama and history and it is interwoven with fairy tales that allude to what has gone on in young Ivory/Nell's life. I found this novel to be trite and too well bundled together to be a great novel. The ending is ridiculous and unbelievable. While it did entertain for the most part, it is not a novel that I would recommend with high hopes for the next reader. It was not terrible but I believe that it is only a best seller because the premise of this story sounds so interesting and full of mystery and intrigue. Too bad the actual story could not fulfill the expectations of the back cover.

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xoxo