Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-06
• Released on: 2008-05-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 350 pages

Choice Magazine
'A haunting story of the search for identity...is packed with memorable characters and evocative settings. '

Daily Express
'A beautifully written and satisfying novel.'

Waterstone's Books Quarterly
'The Forgotten Garden weaves its powerful spell slowly and beautifully.'

Customer Reviews

Intriguing story from start to end.
What a fantastic book. I read it while on holiday in Cornwall so the Cornish theme was very real and I could imagine all the descriptions vividly. This was a great tale about a misplaced girl. It makes you think the whole time; "how would I have felt if I was that girl?", "who would lose their child?". It is not until two thirds of the way through that you start to make your own conclusions. But never knowing for sure what happened right until the end. It was very gripping and I could not put it down.

Very Very disappointing
I'm an avid reader and loved The House at Riverton so when The Forgotten Garden was published I bought it anticipating another great read. Oh dear. The plot leapt about from era to era with several apparently unrelated characters who had no link between them or the dates written about. I never got as far as the garden part but just gave up at Chapter 3 because it was impossible to get into. I passed the book on to a friend with more persistence than I have, and she got no further, so this confusing book has ended up on a charity shop shelf and I hope someone else gets more pleasure from it than we did. One star out of five is being generous.

Excellent fairy tales--shame about the historical inaccuracy, and clunky plot!
I had read-----and enjoyed---Kate Morton's first novel, as a light, romantic read, but I found 'The Forgotten Garden' deeply disappointing. I had the impression that this was an apprentice work, written before 'The House at Riverton' and rushed out by the publishers on the back of her first success----it begins as a romantic page turner and then---horror of horrors---there is a chapter ostensibly set in the London of 1900 which is riddled with irritating anachronisms. From here onwards, the novel---which could have been superb, descends into confused, clunky melodrama and glaring implausibilities. The triple time narrative is a distraction and really doesn't work. And yet---in the pastiche of the early twentieth century fairy tales---just 20 odd pages out of the total 600 plus of the whole book, the reader can perceive that Kate Morton is a sensitive, imaginative writer. With judicious editing and a careful redraft, this could have been a book to rival Daphne du Maurier at her best---sadly, it's not.