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A foundling, an old book of dark fairy tales, a secret garden, an aristocratic family, a love denied, and a mystery. The Forgotten Garden is a captivating, atmospheric and compulsively readable story of the past, secrets, family and memory from the international best-selling author Kate Morton. Cassandra is lost, alone and grieving. Her much loved grandmother, Nell, has just died and Cassandra, her life already shaken by a tragic accident ten years ago, feels like she has lost everything dear to her. But an unexpected and mysterious bequest from Nell turns Cassandra’s life upside down and ends up challenging everything she thought she knew about herself and her family. Inheriting a book of dark and intriguing fairytales written by Eliza Makepeace—the Victorian authoress who disappeared mysteriously in the early twentieth century—Cassandra takes her courage in both hands to follow in the footsteps of Nell on a quest to find out the truth about their history, their family and their past; little knowing that in the process, she will also discover a new life for herself.
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0 0The first thing I would like to say regarding this book is that it took me two tries to get through. The first time I started listening to it, I got about a half hour in and felt it would be one of those tear jerker, everything goes wrong, make me want to kill myself books. I stopped the audio and switched to something else, planning on returning the book.
Then, a few days ago, I had run out of things to listen to at work and saw this still on my phone. Deciding it was better that just hearing other people type for the rest of the day, I restarted the book. Thank goodness I gave it another chance!
The story of Nell and how she wound up in Australia, abandoned and without memory is told through three time periods. We follow The Authoress, Eliza Makepeace, in the early 1900s, Nell in the summer of 1976 and Nell’s granddaughter Cassandra in 2005. Each timeline is wonderfully detailed and keeps pace with each other in terms of discovery and the characters are very human and changed (not always for the better) over time.
The big thing about this book was that practically everyone had their own secrets, and I loved as each secret was discovered. I'll admit that some I did predict a while before our main character Cass figured it out but it was still fun watching her put together the pieces of the puzzle.
The narrator of this audiobook was wonderfully chosen, she has a great voice and lovely accents.
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