Homecoming

Love everything by this author, but this is my favourite. Dual timeline historical fiction with a touch of magical realism set partly in the 1950s in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia, which is when and where my own book Keepers is set and where I'm originally from. So for me it was very much a homecoming. The murder mystery keeps you guessing, the characters are great, her depiction of the Australian landscape is divine, and all round, a highly enjoyable read.

This gorgeous and page-turning novel is mostly set in Australia, a place I’ve never been in real life, but Kate’s novel transported me there through imagery and language. I feel like I could walk straight into that setting and feel as if I’d been there before. 

The story is about a young journalist named Jess who is in search of a story. Jess is summoned back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother is ill in the hospital. What Jess discovers there about a baffling murder in the small town of Tambilla will upend her life. 

I think of some authors as sink-into-the-writing types, and Kate Morton is one of them. I like the stories, I like her writing style, and I like the way things work out in the end. Even when it’s sad, it’s satisfying. 

In The Homecoming, the puzzle at the beginning is intriguing enough to fuel the rest of the book, and the resolution reached at the end brings satisfaction. People make mistakes, but life goes on, and someday, an explanation will bring resolution. I treasure authors who create that feeling of what I call “comfort reading.“ It’s what I try… show more.

As a novelist myself, reading novels is often a workman’s holiday. Recognizing the tropes and guessing the ending way too soon. That doesn’t happen with Kate Morton’s Homecoming, though.

The characters were as complex as my own family members, and the story unraveled in unexpected ways.

Reading this book was like enjoying a luscious hard candy that melts on the tongue slowly, and in layers. The ending was oh-so-perfect and not at all expected. 

 I have been a huge fan of Kate Morton since I read The Forgotten Garden.

I love stories that take place in more than one time period, with a character from the present solving a mystery from the past. Kate Morton does this again in Homecoming. Set in Australia, a young woman comes home to look after her grandmother and learns of a horrible crime involving her family back in 1959.

I have written stories featuring multiple time periods in two of my historical novels.