Kate Morton has become my favorite author! This story may be my favorite of hers. I also loved House at Riverton and liked the forgotten garden. This book is simply addictive! I read it in a day and half because I could not leave it alone! I would put it down and then come right back! Truly a wonderful read!

An intoxicating novel and that I just COULD NOT put down. I was captivated by the images of the historic castle and you could almost feel yourself walking its dampened halls. Full of excitement, drama, the strength of family ties, this story held me in its grasp until the last page. Full of unexpected events, the plot was unexpected and brilliant. I was sad when the story had to come to an end.

Once again I enjoyed this authors style. in general if you like Kate Morton books you'll like this one. She cleverly weaves several stories into one.

I think our whole group enjoyed this one! "It was a dark and stormy night" is a good way to begin describing this novel. Comparison to Jane Eyre and Rebecca come to mind as well. It is a multilayered, inter-generational tale, ultimately about family but full of all that good stuff like maddness, an old castle, mysteries, revelations, murder, love, thunderstorms and more! Beautifully written. Long, but well worth the time!

THE DISTANT HOURS by Kate Morton first introduces us to Edith. Edith is an editor who gets stuck having to, needing to, or wanting to unravel various mysteries throughout the book. All of them in one way or the other have to do with “the sisters Blythe” and their author father.

There are three “sisters Blythe”: two twins and their much younger half sister. We meet them first in 1940s England, during World War II. They live in a castle with their father. And we get snippets of their lives in both flashbacks and the 1990s as the story progresses. In this way, we learn more and more about each of them and the castle’s hold on them.

The Blythe family is strange. But Morton tells their story well, so well that by the second half of the book, I didn’t want to put it down.

But I had to get through the first half first. It was all interesting and told me what I really did need to know about the Blythe family history. But I could have done with fewer details.

The second half, though, is outstanding. I’m very glad I stuck with it.

I love Kate Morton's books and this one was exceptional. Full of dark mysteries that captured my intrigue and imagination from page one. Great read full of many twists and turns.

Kate Morton has weaved another perfect tale! Milderhurst Castle takes on a life of its own and should be considered a main character in this book. Beautifully written, you will be transformed to a place that holds dark secrets, unrealized dreams and sacrifice.

This is not a bad book and some of our club members really liked it. But most of us felt it was too long and had very little payoff for the length of the book. This is better for an individual read. AT 560 pages, it's a lot to slog through if you hate it - and we all know we end up reading things we hate for book club at times. So, overall consensus was that it wasn't terrible but needed some serious editing. We will stick to shorter books in the future.

This book will keep you trying to figure things out until the very end. I am normally annoyed by stories bouncing back and forth between time periods, but this was done artfully by Morton.

As typical of Kate Morton, she is extremely long winded in her descriptions. That being said, her writing is very beautiful. She left much on the table as far as story development. While she tied up all the plots and subplots, it was very superficial. She would have done better to have less subplots and develop them more thoroughly.

I enjoyed the lovely descriptive writing, but admit it could have been 200pp+ shorter!!! Very interesting story & characters. The last 150pp flew as all was revealed.

While the story kept my interest overall; it also ran much too long. They could have easily trimmed 100 pages out of the book.

Fans of Kate Morton will surely love this book. As with her previous novels, she has woven a truly compelling tale overflowing with mysterious themes which capture the reader’s interest. Reality and unreality conjoin like twin shadows, often forcing the reader to question what is feigned and what is bona fide, what is the result of madness and what is rational, who is sane and who is not. It was sometimes hard to separate fact from fancy.
This is the story of a family scarred by the horrors of war, unrequited love, heartbreak, scandals, secrets and madness. Ruled by a patriarch determined to protect his ancestral castle, he exerts enormous control over his descendants, even from beyond the grave.
The Blythe offspring have been cloistered for most of their lives within the confines of the castle. Twins, Persephone and Seraphina, and a younger sibling, Juniper, progeny of two different mothers, inhabit a world often created by their own imagination, hence sometimes intersecting with the real world in disharmony. Their lives and loves are hidden within the confines of the castle’s stone walls.
Meredith Baker is a victim of wartime displacement. At age 14, she is moved with many children, to the countryside, where they will live with host families because their parents fear it is too dangerous for them to remain in London. Separated from her siblings, she is sent to live with the Blythe children and their father, Raymond, a famous author. At Milderhurst Castle she discovers her true desires and blossoms.
The story begins years later. Meredith is married and in her 65th year. Stoic and secretive, she has never revealed her castle experience to her daughter, and when a letter from the past, from that time of her life, unexpectedly arrives so many years later, she opens up a sliver of light into her hidden background because of the profound reaction the letter causes to her state of mind.
The past and present merge as the story unfolds and is developed by Meredith’s daughter, Edith, who discovers the actual Milderhurst castle when she gets lost returning from a business trip. The sisters still live there in its state of decay and through her exploration and research, the walls of the castle reveal their mysteries, exposing the tragedies residing there and illuminating the history of the family that lived there.
The characters are wonderfully drawn and images of them are sharp and clear. It is easy to identify with the emotions they experience. Although the first half of this rather lengthy 650+ page book doesn’t move that quickly, the second half takes off, and the pages fly. It was hard to put it down as I was completely engaged in the effort to discover how the story would resolve and I was not disappointed. My interest was captured and fulfilled as the secrets were revealed.