The Secret Keeper

By Kate Morton

Publication Year: 2012

Type: Fiction

Genre: historical fiction, romance

Read on 2018-06-14

View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2018 Reading Survey ➞

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★★☆☆☆

This is a difficult book to review - I do believe there is a great book in there, but I just truly did not enjoy reading it at all. First of all, I disagree with a lot of the structural choices the author makes in presenting this story. Although the major sections are titled after characters, the story in fact continues to jump between not only different timelines but also different characters with total abandon and no perceptible logic. This is lazy writing.

Second of all, the delayed characterization of the central characters made them incredibly boring - knowing the ending I see why subtlety was crucial, but again, this could’ve been done differently and better. I struggled to care what the “secret” was when I was entirely apathetic about Dolly, Jimmy, and Vivien. I truly did not give a damn who where when what happened.

Third of all - and this is less of an issue - I figured out the plot twist about two thirds of the way through. I attribute this less to good writing than...my own boredom as a reader driving me to make this experience more interesting by running all varieties and combinations of possible “secrets” in my head while I read. From there it was pretty easy to spot the most impressive but still plot-compliant possibility. The plot twist itself, like all plot twists, is not judged so much by what it is as how it is set up; in this case the emotional impact was damaged by my prior grievances, and the logistics were fine but suffered from a general blandness.

Finally, the writing itself is boring. The author takes a very fluffy, rose-tinted approach to writing historical fiction - the tone of the narrative sometimes takes on a lofty superficial quality, which I guess is meant to transport the reader to a romanticized wartime England but which truly does not serve the story. Some people might love this sort of writing - I do not. I find it ineffectual, distracting, and self-indulgent. I much prefer to get characters and scenarios whose actions and motivations are sharp and clearly defined, rather than swept away on a tide of historically-compliant cliches (eg. A character beats his wife out of the blue AND her good friend knows about it and does nothing - and we’re meant to just accept all this because haha! it’s the forties!).