The Clockmaker's Daughter

I am not much of a reader of Historical fiction, especially mysteries, so this book is very much out of my comfort zone. But my friend Ana was going to start it and I decided buddy reading it with with her would be a great experience and good way to try the genre. However, I really have very mixed feelings about this one, so be prepared for an incoherent mess of a review.

This is my first Kate Morton book, so I had no idea what I was getting into, but it was definitely a surprise. The author has a magical way with words – the writing is beautiful, evocative and haunting, the imagery so vivid that I really could visualize it. The story is centred mostly around the English countryside, especially Birchwood Manor, and the setting is truly brought to life. We also get to see the passage of time through the condition of the manor itself and I think that was brilliantly done. However, it's also the same writing that I had my main gripe with. It's too descriptive (which is not my thing at all) and that felt quite boring after a while and I skim read a lot towards the end. But that's probably just my issue and not the book.

I'm usually a fan of multiple timelines and POVs but here it was all a bit too much. The timelines shift back and forth between 1860-70s, WWI, WWII and the present day and it did get tough to keep track of what time period we were in. There are also too many narrators and characters. Just when I thought I was getting to know one character better, their storyline would stop abruptly and they wouldn't show up again for a long time. This really prevented me from getting invested in anyone.

The one prescient narrator who is the main source of the mystery confused me a lot in the beginning but I got used to it as the book went on. Our present day narrator Elodie was definitely one I didn't like at all – she just seemed so disinterested in her own wedding and not quite prudent about the protocols at her work, it ruined my perception about her. And then she uses the mystery as an excuse to not deal with her problems. Despite the many characters, most of their arcs are resolved towards the end, but not all. The reveal of the mystery was very very surprising and unexpected, but also slightly anticlimactic after spending almost 500 pages trying to figure it out. We also never get any character development for Elodie which was disappointing.

All in all, I have to say that I was both pleasantly surprised and bored while reading this book. I obviously didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to, but that's on me. If you are a Kate Morton fan, I'm sure you'll enjoy it better than I did.

I always look forward with great joy to the release of a new Kate Morton book and even though my most frequently read genre at the moment is fantasy I still was waiting with bated breath for the release of The Clockmakers daughter last month. Promising the story of a mysterious event in the summer of 1862 as an artist and his friends stay at his house in the country it promised more of Kate's normal and much-enjoyed format of a historical story intertwining with the modern day as we seek to untangle the mysteries of the past.

This story did initially start out with the normal format with chapters flitting between a mysterious female narrator who we learn is the ghost of someone from the past mixed alongside the story of Elodie Winslow an art archivist in present day who finds a mysterious notebook and photograph during the course of her work that make her think of a place she remembers being told about in childhood. In the first few chapters we learn that something terrible has happened at a place called Birchwood Manor in 1862 and that it led to the loss of a valuable family heirloom. We know that it's all linked to the mysterious voice we are hearing from the past, that of a girl we know as Lily Millington, whose story is one of a childhood lived trying to survive in the harsh world of London when abandoned by her father. So far at about a quarter of the way through I was quite enjoying this book, it was very Kate Morton and I was beginning to hope for learning more about Lily and Elodie in the remaining pages.

Unfortunately, this is where it all went a bit awry for me. As I began to work my way through the rest of the book I began to lose track of all the different characters and timelines we began to encounter. Overall there are at least 7 in this book along with all their associated side characters that pertain to their story. Each is linked to the house at Birchwood but they all have very different stories to tell and we don't always follow them in chronological order so we jump backward and forwards quite a bit throughout this book. Being a reader of Fantasy I am used to following lots of different people throughout the course of a book but on this occasion, I was left a little disappointed as we don't get resolution or expansion on many of the stories Kate starts in this novel. We flit from person to person and often just as we are engaging with that character and their story we are off somewhere and sometime else. We don't ever really return to the characters we leave we just move on. I can see what she was trying to achieve writing about all the lives that the house had touched throughout the years but it just left me struggling to engage with any characters in particular.

And as for the ending, I really really did not like it. It was a huge book at nearly 600 pages and we are building throughout the mystery of what happened in the summer of 1862 and how this mysterious voice from the past was killed and when we get there it was a bit of an anti-climax for me. I struggled with it. Reading the last few chapters I was getting quite frustrated because there is a character who holds all the knowledge as to what happened and has from immediately after it happened and knowing what they do I cannot believe they didn't share it. That they essentially left for years the knowledge that they had. It didn't sit well with me as a reader. Also, the speed with which it all wrapped up in the last few chapters was compared to the rest of the book just lightning quick. We leave many stories unresolved and with more questions than answers.

I can only give this one 3 out of 5 stars this time, which with Kate Morton is highly unusual for me. I wanted to love this book very much but it was too unweildy for me. I am behind not simply having the back and forth between a historical character and present day one in her novels but on this ocassion maybe there was a case of biting off a little more than one could chew.

Spoilers ahead:

I went from giving this book 2.5 stars in the middle to 3 stars at the end. Here's why.

It started off interesting. A story of an archivist (Elodie) who is engaged to be married, (seemingly having doubts) who tragically lost her mother when she was small, is consumed with trying to identify a mysterious woman from a photograph and her connection between two men from the past, and a house that she feels oddly attached to although she has never visited.

I love the story of a house with so many secrets; the truth is somewhere inside. And with this historical house, it is understandable why there would be so many characters who have lived or visited. However, it was hard to keep up with the multitude of characters, their connections to each other and the timeline. As I was reading, I was suddenly led on one different pathway after another, through a different point of view, through a slew of other different characters, that it became confusing, and on some occasions, very boring to read.

By the end, I started to understand the different timelines and connections, but it was already too late for me. I just wanted the book to be over.

I gave this book 3 stars.