Currently reading
Alex
The Glass Room
Peter the Great: His Life and World
If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children
Skin Deep
The Good Daughter
A Boy in Winter
The Tie That Binds
The Idiot (Everyman's Library, #254)
The Velvet Hours
The Book of Secrets
The book of Secrets by Elizabeth Joy Arnold is an interesting novel and tells the story of the Sinclair family. This is certainly a family that have been bound and pulled apart by the forces of imagination and religious belief. At the heart of this story lies a mystery. We read how family secrets can alter relationships and how people cope with these secrets once they have been discovered.I really enjoy books set around family secrets and was drawn to this book as soon as I had read the first few chapters. The book certainly starts out strong and I loved how the author weaved famous book names through the novel's story and you got a sense of the love the author has for reading and books and the stories they tell. There is also a great deal of weaving back and forth between the past and present but I felt the author did an excellent job as sometimes the story can get lost with too many flashbacks but not with The book of secrets.
The plot of the novel is strong although half way through the book I felt it lagged and I found myself putting the book aside in favour of something else. I did pick it up a few days later and found myself getting back into the story and really liked the last quarter of the novel.
This is an easy read and a slow paced novel, the characters and plot are well drawn although lack any real quality that would make this book memorable for me.
A nice summer read and I look forward to other novel's by this writer.
Thank you to NetGalley and Bantam books for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an unbiased review.
