The Secret Keeper

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton
digital galley provided by Simon & Schuster via NetGalley
Description from Goodreads:
1961 England. Laurel Nicolson is sixteen years old, dreaming alone in her childhood tree house during a family celebration at their home, Green Acres Farm. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and then observes her mother, Dorothy, speaking to him. And then she witnesses a crime.

Fifty years later, Laurel is a successful and well-regarded actress, living in London. She returns to Green Acres for Dorothy’s ninetieth birthday and finds herself overwhelmed by memories and questions she has not thought about for decades. She decides to find out the truth about the events of that summer day and lay to rest her own feelings of guilt. One photograph, of her mother and a woman Laurel has never met, called Vivian, is her first clue.

The Secret Keeper explores longings and dreams, the lengths some people go to fulfill them, and the strange consequences they sometimes have. It is a story of lovers, friends, dreamers and schemers, play-acting and deception told against a backdrop of events that changed the world.

My Take:
I have been meaning to read some of Kate Morton's work and The Secret Keeper turned out to be a great opportunity. I was so pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book! Now, of course, I will be purchasing her other books. I love it when you find an author that really impresses you.

I enjoyed being pulled along on the search for the reason behind the crime that a young Laurel witnesses in 1961. As Dorothy draws closer to the end of her life, her daughter, Laurel begins to revisit that crime she witnessed as a child and decides she needs to find out what happened and why. Her sister shows her an old photo of Dorothy and a friend that they have never met and this is the catalyst for her search for answers. 

The Secret Keeper has multiple narrators, each with their part to play in the drama that was Dorothy's life.  The story is difficult to describe without giving away too much of the plot. The reader is given pieces of the picture from several different points of view and at different periods during Dorothy's life. I loved the way the  pieces of the story were woven together and I enjoyed the historical aspect as well. I don't want to give very much away, but I do love an unreliable narrator! It keeps things so exciting and makes predicting endings much more difficult. This was a great, entertaining read and I would highly recommend it.