I read the Secret Keeper (I love how "the" isn't capitalized on the title) for bookclub. Not that I wouldn't have read it, but no one had recommended it to me. I am recommending it to you.
The Secret Keeper opens in 1961. Laurel is a typical 16 year old. She's the oldest of 5 children. She has 3 sisters and a 2 year old brother, Gerry. She lives an idyllic life in the English countryside with parents who love each other and their children. Then something happens when Laurel is hidden in a tree house deciding if she will join the family birthday party for Gerry, down by the river.
Laurel's mother, Dorothy, has returned to the house with Gerry in order to get the birthday cake knife. As Dorothy and Gerry leave the house a stranger comes up the driveway. Laurel hears him say "Hello Dorothy" and then Dorothy stabs him in the chest with the knife. And the story begins . . .
The story flows between 2011 as Dorothy's children gather at their childhood home while Dorothy is dying, the London Blitz in 1941, 1961, and the late 1920s and 1930s to get background information on all the characters.
This is a fabulous mystery and readers are rewarded at the end.
