In the midst of chaos and mayhem there are always books and reading and for that I am eternally grateful. I needed to escape this week and Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden was just what the Doctor ordered. A foundling, an old book of dark fairy tales, a secret garden, an aristocratic family, a love denied, and a mystery. A book to get lost in with lots of suspense and intrigue. It was set in several timeframes including the 1890s, early 1900s, 1975 and 2005 which could have been confusing...

Oh, this was such a delight to read! I didn't think a story about a family mystery could be so entertaining throughout, while still staying realistic and not going too over the top.Kate Morton just has the absolute best writing style for stories of this kind. She has a way of completely trapping you in the story she's telling, so that you lose yourself in it and just can't find a way out. And that's something highly positive! This is only the second book of hers I've read, but I'm already certai...

God Bless A Milk Cow!Once again, most of my friends on GR loved this book to death! I'm going to quit picking books my friends love to death! I have had this book for a year or more. I got it from the used bookstore for $1.00. I love the cover, I loved the summary and I thought I would love the book. Now, don't get me wrong. I liked the book, it just didn't take me there, wherever it took everyone else. Actually, there are 2 or 3 friends that almost everything they love, I will only like or not...

5 stars to Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden. The plot is mesmerizing and the story-telling of the grandmother and the granddaughter is unparalleled. Morton jumps from time period to time period, country to country, character to character in a flawless manner. The imagery is astounding. The relationships are well planned. Morton keeps you guessing as to how it's all connected with the garden up front and center the whole way through the ride. Thoroughly enjoyed the journey this book takes you o...

Sometimes when people keep recommending a book, you should listen and read that book. The Forgotten Garden is such a book. You finally read it and end up wondering why in the world you waited so long. Kate Morton provides the intricate layering of different times and places in a masterful manner, gifting the reader with a story that captures the imagination and heart completely. Nell, as the lost child, is the pivotal character around which all mysteries and actions revolve. A tale that begins i...

*Kat looks at The Forgotten Garden**Kat looks at the beckoning stack of other books to read**Kat looks back at the first 33 pages of The Forgotten Garden**Kat groans*So basically there's this woman. Let's call her Stupidhead because I couldn't care enough to remember her name. She finds out on her 21st birthday party that her loving, adoring family is not her biological family. They found her as a very small child and cared enough to take her in and give her a wonderful home full of people who l...

Aussie author Kate Morton deftly managed to push nearly every one of my reading buttons with her lovely book, The Forgotten Garden:1. Not so young woman with a haunted past - check2. Not-so-fairy-Grandmother who bequeaths said woman an old house with a mysterious history - check3. Said old, mysterious house is actually a cottage on the wild Cornish coast, complete with a hidden garden, a handsome neighbor, and the faintest suggestion of the supernatural - check4. Said woman embarks on a quest to...

I read 549 pages and that was the reveal? Really?God, I was bored. I only stuck it out because I figured the book had to be building up to something. And I suppose that technically, it was. Just not anything particularly interesting or worth waiting for. I get it, everyone in the book has mother/child abandonment issues.I think this book really wanted to be The Thirteenth Tale, but didn't have the balls (if you pardon the inaccurate expression, what with how female-centric both titles are). Now ...

***Added Later:My summary of this book would have to be this: it is an oddly-plotted book about very stupid people written in lovely language.But oh, the idiot characters. Honestly. Why would Nell be such a twitty jerk to her fiance and adoptive family? Why on earth would Eliza act as she did? Sorry; don't buy it.-----------------------Figured out what "happened" (the mystery of the little girl on the boat) earlier on and scanned much of the rest. Didn't find the characters' behavior believable....

While this is ostensibly a novel of secrets spanning four generations, most of the “secrets” are fairly obvious. I kept waiting for the blow to fall — murder? incest? buried treasure?? Alas, no. The narration shifts among different-but-related storylines, all of which, to be fair, I found intriguing: in 1913 a child who can’t remember her name turns up on an Australian dock carrying a book of fairy tales; in 2005 her granddaughter tries to uncover the mysteries of a hidden garden in Cornwall; in...