The Forgotten Secret, book review

The Forgotten Secret: A heartbreaking and gripping historical novel for fans of Kate Morton by Kathleen McGurl
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I picked this book because I love historical fiction, my father-in-law is (directly) from Ireland, and the description seemed intriguing. In the end, the book paid me back with intrigue and an interesting story, but it took a while to get there.

One of my pet peeves when reading is when the prose *tells* rather than *shows* and I'm sorry to say that was a frequent distraction in my mind while reading this book. It had a compelling enough story, but the characters felt flat until about halfway through the book. Rather than seeing that as character development, I felt like I just wasn't privy to the personalities of the characters. They were too busy *telling* me things about themselves and their lives.

(view spoiler)[I did learn a lesson in this book (one I've had to learn multiple times over in my lifetime): you don't know someone else's situation, so hold back your judgments. The modern day main character, Clare, seemed to very quickly decide to leave her husband when the opportunity arose, though she didn't seem to have the backbone prior to this to even stand up to him. I was so bothered by the fact that she wouldn't pursue marital counseling that I sat frustrated with her through most of the pages. By the end chapters, the character had slowly revealed countless anecdotes of life with her controlling, emotionally abusive husband. No, I never ever liked him. He was quite the villain. I learned my lesson that I was spending so much time judging her that I might have missed parts of her personality.

The book carries with it the common millennial psalm/proverb for women to become independent and separate yourself from men so you can "find yourself." As a joyful Catholic, I find that a little shallow, but I recognize its place in our culture. Also as a joyful Catholic, I'm disgusted by a renewed understanding of those laundries, as embodied in the novel. Awful, unchristian practices. Heart-breaking. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, the fact that I felt I was being told so much instead of being able to uncover emotions, motivations, and metaphors on my own was frustrating enough to overtake the intrigue of the story. I did cry in pain at times and finally connected with both characters in the last 25% of the book, so that's lovely.

Thank you to the author and to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

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