Hello readers! This is my first official review, and I hope you like it.
The Forgotten Garden
By Kate Morton
Told through three perspectives - Cassandra, Eliza, and Nell - this book is a mystery, a romance, and a fairy tale all at once. It is a perfect read for teen girls, young adults - basically women of all ages would love it. Kate Morton tells this complicated tale in three different time periods, but connects them all with family history, an old and mysterious book of fairy tales, and a hidden secret just waiting to be uncovered.
The modern-day character, Cassandra, is greiving the loss of her dear grandmother, Nell, while also dealing with a tragic accident that tore her family apart many years ago. Nell leaves Cassandra with more than just precious memories, however. She gives her an old book of fairy tales written by Eliza Makepeace, a Victorian author, and an old cottage on the Cornish coast. The house is filled with mystery and a feeling of the supernatural, and the neighbor is pretty cute, too (not to mention helpful and nice...) So, on Cassandra's end of the story, we have a family history that is more than what Cassandra knows it to be. With the help of the neighbor, she goes on a mission to connect the dots of her past, while somehow accepting the present.
Nell's story is somewhat vague at the beginning, but that's the point - it's the main mystery of the whole novel. Nell, Casandra's grandmother, had a life filled with twists and turns - none of which Cassandra knows anything about. As Cassandra uncovers her family history in the present-day, Nell's story of the past unfolds.
Victorian England is the setting for Eliza's tale, which is the source of the supernatural element (not aliens or anything, it's much less in-your-face - guardian-angel-esque, so to speak). Like Nell's story, Eliza grows from a young child to an adult throughout her story. Her end of the novel is one filled with abuse, grief, enchantment, and complicated friendships - not to mention the class differences of the 19th century. Eliza's tale is a bit separted from Nell's and Cassandra's until nearly the end, where the conneciton will either seem very obvious, or will slowly develop until the last line of the novel - the "aha moment."
Altogether,
The Forgotten Garden is a novel that is intriguing to the last letter. You should probably pace yourself while reading to avoid the slight confusion that arises from the multiple time periods and characters, who are all remarkably similar. This may be difficult, considering that locking yourself in your room and addictively zipping through the book is a very appealing idea once you get past the first chapter or so (but really, when is the first chapter ever
that good?).
The Forgotten Garden will leave you sitting and thinking for days about the characters, their stories, their families, and their connections. I'd even say it's worth buying the hardcover (which I have, if anyone was wondering).
