BOOK REVIEW - THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN

From the inside jacket of the book: " A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913.  She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book--a beautiful volume of fairy tales.  She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own.  On her 21st. birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, "Nell" sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to find her real identity."

The premise was intriging and I wanted to love this book but I thought the writing style created a very choppy story.  The author Kate Morton, jumped around in time periods to the point of irritating me.  I felt like I was just getting into a rhythm with the characters and time period and then she would switch.   I know detail is intended to be the bones of a story but some of the same detail in this book was repeated a little too often.  The mystery was compelling and there were some surprising twists that I had figured out long before the author let us know, but I guess that is fine.  For all her detail I could not picture how the secret garden wall functioned and it was important to the plot.   I finished it and enjoyed the story in many ways.   I would give it 3 stars out of 5.