Fiction Review: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

3 of 5 stars

My friend passed this across the table and promised a trio of spinsters, a creaky castle and long hidden family secrets. I probably should not have taken the book, seeing as it’s roughly a million pages long and I read at a slugs pace, but I was sold anyway because I’m nosy and books with dark secrets cannot be turned away.

This book kept luring me in with a whole lot of this.

But then it delivered nothing but a whole lot of empty promises until about page 4 million and 80. Then the twists and turns come fast and furiously but for me it was a little too little and all far too late.

From here on out, I will never ignore my instincts to DNF.

So on to the good. For those with more patience for slow moving books than I, this story is very atmospheric and I have to admit that there was something about it that kept me reading. It starts off with a letter that leads a woman to delve into the past of her mom and her relationship to three sisters who live in a castle. She’s nosy like me. I liked her. There’s a smidge of romance and the promise of dastardly deeds and perhaps a murder. There were many points where I zombie read and had to flip back a few pages but it always managed to re-hook me. The characters are also a quirky bunch and I liked that.

So, I’d say this is a good choice for a gloomy rainy day (week, month?) if you like mysterious books where the castle is more of a character than many of the living, breathing characters within. But you must have endless patience and I clearly do not.

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