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Book Summary InformationAuthor: Karen White Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 2009-04-07 ISBN: 0451226496 Number of pages: 343 Publisher: NAL Trade Product features: - The Lost Hours
- by Karen White
Book Reviews of The Lost HoursBook Review: Enjoyable but problematic Summary: 3 Stars
Piper's grandmother has Alzheimer's and has been in a home for awhile. But her grandfather just died, leaving her a charm and some other cryptic pieces to the puzzle that is her grandmother's past. But before she can even try to find out more from her grandmother, she dies as well. Her only key is to search out one of Abigail's closest friends, Lillian. Lillian is ashamed of the past and Piper must work to even meet with her. And there's a complication in her fairly recently widowed grandson, who is learning how to live with his guilt and his daughters.
This doesn't even get into the equestrian issues. There's a lot going on in this book, and it takes awhile to get going. My mother and I both agreed that the grandmother's death was very abrupt, as there is a timeskip in the book but it isn't clearly presented. My mom also helped me realize something else that bothered me about the death. The grandfather's death starts the book and is elaborated upon, but the grandmother's is barely mentioned in the action of the book. Yet THE LOST HOURS is all about Abigail's life and how Piper finds out about it. It seems odd that her death is so ignominious. (One of the other problems with the read wasn't a fault of the text. This was one of those ARCs with lots of typos, but that should be fixed in the final, though I haven't been able to flip through a final to confirm this assertion.)
Once THE LOST HOURS gets going, it is a very interesting read. Okay, it does take too long to read the scrapbook, but the revelations are interesting. Karen White brings the segregated South to life through the eyes of two different young women who aren't prepared for how people will react to their actions. Lillian in particular is a fascinating character. I want to read THE LOST HOURS again to pick more of her apart. Piper's a fine protagonist, but Lillian's more interesting because she's peculiar and enigmatic.
Helen, Lillian's granddaughter, is less intriguing but still a fun character. I liked that she was very functional and competent - moreso than many of the other characters - even though she was blind. (Though I am not the one to ask about how accurate the portrayal of blindness was.) Tucker, her brother and Piper's love interest, felt a little flatter. He served his purpose, but I didn't really connect to him beyond that.
Those looking for a classic whodunit mystery might be disappointed, but I thought the atmosphere and was well-done and the answers to the past satisfying. The beginning of THE LOST HOURS could use work, but it finishes strong. T
From In Bed With Books
Summary of The Lost HoursRead Karen White's posts on the Penguin Blog.
The award-winning author of The Memory of Water delivers a gripping tale of family, fate, and forgiveness.
When Piper Mills was twelve, she helped her grandfather bury a box that belonged to her grandmother in the backyard. For twelve years, it remained untouched.
Now a near fatal riding accident has shattered Piper?s dreams of Olympic glory. After her grandfather?s death, she inherits the house and all its secrets, including a key to a room that doesn?t exist?or does it? And after her grandmother is sent away to a nursing home, she remembers the box buried in the backyard. In it are torn pages from a scrapbook, a charm necklace?and a newspaper article from 1939 about the body of an infant found floating in the Savannah River. The necklace?s charms tell the story of three friends during the 1930s? each charm added during the three months each friend had the necklace and recorded her life in the scrapbook. Piper always dismissed her grandmother as not having had a story to tell. And now, too late, Piper finds she might have been wrong.
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