Book Review: The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Acclaimed actress Laurel Smitham has returned home to say goodbye to her dying mother, and in turn will solve the mystery that started in 1961, when she saw her mother kill a man. She begins to pry into her mother’s past, trying to link what she knows about her mother to what other people are telling her. She finds that the pieces don’t fit together, that it seems that people are describing two very different women. The author takes the reader on a journey through time, seamlessly integrating the present with the past. In wartime London where the threats of air raids are always a present thought, the reader meets Dorothy (Dolly), who would later become Laurel’s mother, and who dreams of a life bigger than the idyllic farm life she has known. Taking a job as a companion for a wealthy woman is the first step Dolly takes to secure that ‘better life’ for herself and Jimmy, the man she believes she is destined to spend her life with. Her dreams are filled with the belief that she will inherit her employer’s wealth, and that she is friends with the woman across the street, Vivien. When it becomes obvious that Dolly’s dreams and hopes will not come true, she seeks out revenge against those that she believes have wronged her, blocking the fortune that she believed was hers. With the help of the reluctant Jimmy, she sets her scheme into motion to blackmail Vivien, who she believes has been at the root of all her disappointments, however, her vision of Vivien and the truth are, as Jimmy (and later, Laurel) discovers, to be quite different. The book explores the lives of the three key female characters Laurel, Dolly and Vivien, and showcases how these three character are tied together on one final night at the height of World War 2, and dips in and out of the character’s lives until the final revelations are made.