Book #14: The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Turns out I'm really a terrible reader for these types of books. I am a HORRIBLY impatient reader--I hate having to wait for the end to figure out what's going on. I almost always skip to the end before I get there, just to make sure everything's going to end up all right. Or sometimes I'll even google it, just in case. Like, I read the afterword to the 7th Harry Potter before I'd finished. Isn't that terrible? I just get so invested in the story that I can't bear to wait and find out what happens until the end. So Kate Morton's style is to have this whole mystery going on, something that happened long ago in the past that someone in the present is trying to unravel, and you find out random answers or parts of the story as you go along but you don't learn it all until the very end of the book (obviously). But I CANNOT handle learning this huge mystery at the beginning and then take 400 pages to get to the end! It drives me crazy! In a good way, I guess, but like I said, I'm really impatient. It forces me to sit down and plow through the book, skimming quickly to get to the end as quick as possible.

I liked The Secret Keeper much better than The Forgotten Garden--although I liked The Forgotten Garden, I felt like there were so many facets to the mystery and so many random things that happened to help the main character discover the truth that it wasn't even believable. This book was much more realistic, I thought, and had a very compelling storyline. I really didn't like the beginning half of the book as much--I really didn't like Dolly's character and was so bugged by everything she did, and how she was being changed. She was so innocent and cute at the beginning, and you want her to stay that way, but I did not like her by the end. But then you feel like you have to because she's the narrator's mom. . . . Anyway, I won't give any spoilers, but things all work out. The second half of the book was much better than the first.

I also really liked how it was set in WWII London--I'd never considered what it was like to live in London during the Blitz. I'd love to read more about that time period.