by Kate Morton

From the description: "June 1933, and the Edevane family's country house, Loeanneth, is polished and gleaming, ready for the much-anticipated Midsummer Eve party. Alice Edevane, sixteen years old and a budding writer, is especially excited. Not only has she worked out the perfect twist for her novel, she's also fallen helplessly in love with someone she shouldn't. But by the time midnight strikes and fireworks light up the night skies, the Edevane family will have suffered a loss so great that they leave Loeanneth forever."

This is a Mystery story that moves forward to when Alice is an old lady and the mystery of a missing child has still not been solved. In the beginning of the story, we get to know young Alice and become part of her dreamy world. She's an aspiring writer, has a crush on a man too old for her and she has a secret, something she's hidden from her family that you just know will be important later, but the reader doesn't get told what it is so soon.

The writing is really superb in this one. There are three strong female characters, each very different. It transports you to the place and time and inside of Alice's world easily from the very start. There are a few flashbacks, including the story of how her parents met, and an off duty detective begins to investigate the never solved mystery of the missing child, though the trail has gone cold over the years.

I actually found myself more caught up in Alice's mother's story than her own, but all of the facets of the tale kept my attention. The interweaving strands of mystery all come together in the end, although one aspect of Sadie's story was not resolved to my satisfaction which costs it a star. Definitely five star writing though!

by Kate Morton

Elodie, is getting married soon, but she doesn't seem all that interested. She's a likeable character with a strong sense of her own independence and a love of researching the past, which is part of her job. Although her part in the story is set in modern day, she has the feel of a Victorian character out of place.

I really enjoyed reading this at first as the writing is very good and I could identify with Elodie in many ways, but as the chapters went on I felt it became very slow. There are interesting time jumps, but they aren't done as smoothly as they might have and the connection between Elodie and Ada had a lot of potential, but again, things just took forever to progress.

I think this story could have been shorter and tightened up. Some brilliant creative ideas were in there that deserved to hold my interest more than they did.

Well, that was without doubt the hardest-earned point for the Festive Tasks I've ever completed.

To be fair, the fact that I did get Percy's story in the end and that it did turn out in a way I had hoped, well, that made up for quite bit of the stupid purple prose, circular narration, bad plotting, and irritating main character.

However, it did not turn this into a good book.

Nor did my delight over Percy's story make me forget the lack of editing, ridiculous use of pretty much every trope there is, or the utterly pointless length of this book. It should have been cut by at least 250 pages.

Whaaaaaaat?????

That's a preposterous entail.

Not to mention the other ridiculous revelations. And why isn't there more time spent on assessing the events surrounding Thomas? His disappearance was supposed to be the main mystery here, wasn't it?

Although, to be fair Morton has so much going on in this book that she probably lost track of which mystery we were trying to solve.

Much like she lost track of which fruits Juniper bought at the market earlier in the story. It was pears. Yet, pears turned into cherries a few pages later. (Btw, cherries were not in season at the time of the story's setting....pears would have made more sense. Gaaaah!)

Good grief, this book needed editing so badly.

Bwaahahahahaaa!

I'll keep the spoilers to a minimum from here on but I'm convinced Morton is messing with us on purpose...to facilitate joyous games of "Tropeycal Bingo" amongst book clubs. 

Since my last update this morning, there are at least three more tropes to be ticked off the checklist...or called in the hypothetical bingo game.

I wonder what else Morton throws into the last 140 pages.

Also, from here on there is wine.