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Review of The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

book cover image The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton Poisoned PenImagine watching your loving, nearly perfect mother stand on the front stairs of your farmhouse, put the baby down behind her and stab a man to death and then act as if this brutal act had little to do with her? You’d probably accept your mother’s explanation of self-defense against a random attack. And so Laurel Nicolson did for fifty years. But now, when her mother is near the end of her life, a chance discovery of a photo and a gnawing sense that she’s been keeping her mother’s secret for too long, lead Laurel to question everything she understood about her family.

At one point in The Secret Keeper I thought, oh, I’ve got this figured out and it’s turning too predictable. Such hubris. I wasn’t close and I can’t talk much about the plot and its many twists, they are too much fun to fall for. In the course of the novel, you’ll explore London during the blitz, family dynamics of the boisterous, lovingly squabbling sort and the violent, dangerous sort, misguided social climbing, mental delusions of the old and young, idyllic English countryside living, artistic talent and how it forms and drives personalities (and scientific talent, actually, now I think about it), wartime mentality and the strange choices people make when living with death all around them. Skilled, detailed character development with gradual revelations lies at the core of this book with a plot that turns out to be much trickier than it appears.

6 thoughts on “Review of The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton”

  1. Hi Rebecca and Pat. I do love my role as evil temptress of reading. All those years as an English teacher trying to get kids to read, and all I needed to do was switch to adults and write reviews. I have no help, Rebecca, for the overloaded TBR list. Mine evokes images of those giant ever-growing islands of plastic and assorted found objects in the middle of the sea. One is said to be the size of Texas–that’s my out of control reading list, although not at all as trashy, I hope. So many books, so little time. And then I do try to write also.

  2. Ha Ha, that’s quite a mental picture there! If ONLY all that plastic were really books on bookshelves.

  3. Cynthia Robertson

    Evil Temptress of Reading. I like it. Maybe a good name for your blog.
    For how short this review is, it sure packs punch. Perfect for a Shelf Awareness issue!

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