Review of The Lost Hours- Karen White

The Lost Hours- Karen White

From Goodreads- 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 1929 about the body of an infant found floating in the Savannah River. The necklace’s charms tell the story of three friends during the 1920s— 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.


The story begins when Piper's grandfather dies, and is visited by the family lawyer, who gives Piper an envelope that was to be given to her when her grandfather died. In the envelope is a key, that she has no idea which door it belongs to. She then remembers burying something of her grandmothers outside with her grandpa a long time ago, and when she goes and digs it up, thus begins the mystery of Annabel O'Hare. The mystery revolves around three good friends growing up in the early 1900's, Annabel, Lillian, and Josie.The story is done with three points of view, Lillian's, who is the only one of the three friends alive, Helen, Lillian's blind granddaughter, and Piper. The story is Piper's though, and how she comes to grow as the mystery unravels. One of the things I really can't stand in a book is a lot of filler, and this book had alittle to much. There was a bunch of little bits of writing about the flowers they grew, and the scents, etc. Some readers like stuff like that, I'm one that just wants the story to move along.

About a 75 pages in I completely disliked Piper. She was cold, and lacked any kind emotion. I'm so glad the mystery kept me reading because I would have quite reading it. As you read the story though, you realize this was done to show her growth as the story moves along. Piper lost her parents at a early age, and felt because of that she wouldn't be dealt another blow, so when she fell off her horse at a competion and was seriously hurt, she was bitter about it. She realizes that she never made the time to really get to know her grandmother, and what kind of person she was. Lillian was also hard to like, though I never grew to even like her, I still felt her character was written well. Part of the story also included Helen, and her brother Tucker. Half way through the book you can see a attraction between Piper and Tucker, but this is not a romance, and I'm glad the author kept it as such.

Final thoughts, I was sure that I wasn't going to like this book, solely because of the dislike I had for some of the characters, but the writing was good, and the mystery definitely keeps you reading.


PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: NAL Trade; 1 edition (April 7, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0451226496


Rating: 3.5/5