Kate Morton certainly knows how to weave a story. This time, she had her work cut out for her as there were so many threads that had to come together to make the whole. The very many characters and time periods was a bit overwhelming at times, but at the end of the day, “The Clockmaker’s Daughter” was a very satisfying read.

More than just your usual historical fiction, it was a study of aging, regret, of loss, of great love, of parents and children, and of the different incarnations of one old house over many years. A great read for a stormy winter’s day.

Being a big fan of The House at Riverton, I was looking forward to reading this, but it wasn’t quite as good for me. The use of words that were not of the location or era (seeing a man about a dog, sneakers, kerosene, etc.) was actually jarring and the ending was too abrupt. I also didn’t enjoy the timeline used; I like the back-and-forth between time periods which I think works better for these types of books.
Thanks to NetGalley for the eARC.

This was a brilliant read. As soon as I started reading this book I just knew I was going to love it. Highly recommended

This book is written in so many different times and narrated by so many different characters it is almost impossible to keep track of what is going on. I did like the book but I feel that it should have been made more obvious what time we were in and whose perspective it was. For this reason I find it difficult to write a brief synopsis because I wouldn’t know where to start.
I’m sorry but I wouldn’t recommend this book because it took far too long to read (nearly 2 weeks) and I usually read a book in a couple of days. I give it 2 stars because it was a good idea but impossible to know where you were.

Provided by NetGalley for an honest review.

This started off really, really slowly for me. I was struggling to get into it. But at some point I found I was hooked. I wanted to know how both Fanny and Lily died. I wanted to know how each character was connected with the other, through the times and I wanted to know about the diamond and how that all tied in. It was sad in places, happy in places. I felt all the feels!
Definitely a recommended read.

Unfortunately this book was not for me, it was a bit slower than I would like and it just didn't hold my attention. I am sure other people will love it!

When Elodie, an archivist uncovers a leather satchel containing a photograph of an unidentified woman and an artist’s sketchbook, she's unaware of the mystery she has discovered that leads her back to a murder in a country house in 1862.

Told through multiple timelines and characters, including one belonging to a ghost, the reader is brought back to many times that Birchwood Manor provided a home and a place for refuge for people and how all these stories are connected to the murder of a young socialite, the disappearance of a beautiful model, and the distraught artist they both left behind.

I listened to this on audio narrated by Joanne Froggart (who plays Anna Bates in Downton Abbey) so that was fun, and she did a really good job. I liked this book and I was definitely intrigued by the mystery of Lilly Millington, and who she really was and what had happened to her. I do think at times the story suffered from having too many characters, as Elodie's story 100% got lost along the way, and by the time we made our way back to it very briefly, I didn't care about her anymore.

I did feel a bit sad at the end of the book the way some things ended up, but overall this was an enjoyable read and listen. Kate Morton is a very good writer, and she's always able to tell these type of multiple timeline stories really well.

It has been too long since I have read a book by Kate Morton. This is a very deep book. The storyline is quite complicated with many different characters involved spanning quite a long period of time. As a result it did take me a while to get into it. However, I reached a point where all of the story threads came together and I realised what a marvel of a book this is. A beautiful, captivating, moving story.

Sorry, but I've not been able to get going with this book. I've started it several times and keep stalling. I'm finding it too choppy and complex with far too many viewpoint characters... including a satchel. I've seen others comment that there are too many loose ends left dangling and if I've spent time reading a 400+ page book only to have loose ends, then I won't be happy and that would risk me giving a very poor review. It's too long a book to be unsatisfying.

I won't give a low-star review for a book I haven't even finished, and I won't be sharing this 'review' publicly.

I enjoyed the first part of this story, warming to the characters and the descriptions of setting and time and place, but after about a quarter of the way in I found I was finding it a little slow and began to become less engaged with it. I've read this author before and enjoyed them. I wasn't expecting action and fast paced plots but this wasn't one of her bests in my humble opinion.

This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

I'm afraid this style was not for me. I enjoy psychological thrillers, and that is what I should stick with to escape from the real world. Maybe on reading the synopsis, I expected Agatha Christie, but obviously that would be a stretch. I did try, but failed to be captured, and therefore did not feel remotely compelled to carry on after the opening chapters.

This is no reflection on the author; the folly was with me in having differing expectations, and therefore it is not right for me to proffer a star rating. However, I cannot post this without a rating, so begrudgingly I shall enter 2.

Kate Morton has written another beautiful story. The main character in this story is the house, Birchwood Manor. It moves from the present day when a young woman Elodie finds a satchel with a sketch book and a photo of a beautiful young woman which she follows up on back to the summer of 1862 when a group of artists met up in the house. The house once belonged to a famous artist, Edward Radcliffe, and during the summer of 1862 a group of his friends spent time in Radcliffe Manor where there was a death and a valuable piece of jewellery went missing. We see a number of characters all through the years and hear their stories. They all come together and the mystery is eventually solved. There are some very interesting characters, the house itself being one of them. My only problem is the book ends with some questions that are not answered, what happens Elodie? How does Juliette fit into it all?
I love reading Kate Morton books and this is no exception.
Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I always enjoy a Kate Morton book, she was the first one to have the secret going back in a family that the current generation discovers, with the dual time-frame to tell the story. It is a great formula that works. I enjoyed this latest one by her but I did find it a little long (always keen for a bit of editing, me) but it was still a good read.

The writing is exquisite, the plot intricate and the outcome is seamless. Anyone looking for a vast historical fiction to get lost in, look no further Morton is perfect.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for sending me this in exchange for an open and honest review.

To be honest, this was not for me. Not gripping enough but very descriptive and I thought it was really well written.

There is always something truly epic about Kate Morton’s writing; historical settings, layered secrets, woven to span years and years. The Clockmakers Daughter is true to form, it doesn’t disappoint. I loved The Forgotten Garden, so it was great to read this too.

I've long been a fan of Kate Morton's novels, and was really excited when I saw that this title had come out.
This story centres around Birchwood Manor - a country house which was descended upon by a group of artists in the summer of 1862. By the end of their stay, a woman had been shot dead, another had vanished, along with a precious jewel.
More than 150 years later, a young archivist, Elodie Winslow, comes across an old satchel containing a photography of a woman in Victorian clothing, along with a sketch book belonging to a well known artist called Edward Radcliffe. Elodie is drawn to these objects, and finds herself confounded by one of Edward's sketches which contains a drawing of a house which is familiar to Elodie - it is one which her deceased mother had described many times and told stories about.
Told from multiple perspectives, through multiple timeframes, there are plenty of recognisable traits of Morton's writing in this book. It is beautifully narrated and the sense of place is very strong in all sections.
However, it was not my favourite Morton novel, and I found myself frustrated by the length and by some of the characters which felt cliched.

I always get excited about a new release from Kate Morton and The Clockmakers Daughter was no exception. Luckily, Netgalley provided me with an advance copy for an honest review. I’m just not sure what happened after that. Let’s go from the top.

Elodie Winslow, an archivist in London, discovers a sketchbook in a satchel bag and is instantly intrigued by one of the drawings – a twin-gabled house near a river. Brilliant, I think. Working as an archivist would be such a great job because the grass is always greener in the job you don’t have.

Soon after this, the reader is introduced to an extensive number of new characters from different periods of history and within fifty pages, you have yarn vomit (for all my crotchet and knitting readers).

Basically, all the ideas are presented in such a way that for me was unclear, there are so many characters introduced, from so many time periods it’s a struggle to keep them in the right decade and the link between the multiple threads (see what I did there) is so tenuous and sort of predictable and suddenly you’re in a pair of fishnets trying to keep warm.

Don’t get me wrong, the writing is the same lyrical prose we’ve all come to expect and love. Morton delivers on the imagery, the emotive occurrences and it is easy to imagine each of the settings. No matter where we read from, it seems we have a familiarity with the locations. This skill, however, isn’t enough to save even the most dedicated reader from boredom. I don’t know how far into The Clockmaker’s Daughter I was before I started checking how much was left but it felt never-ending.

Ultimately, I didn’t love it – I don’t think I was even lukewarm for it by the end. The Clockmaker’s Daughter suffered because of a weak foundation. I also feel it was a mistake by Morton to focus so much on the history lessons intermittently spaced throughout the book. I was especially lost when suddenly we were in India and this was compounded by the storyline that followed. I feel it was unnecessary for so much of the word count to be given over to something that could have been a passing reference. There were already enough characters without this part.

It is a real struggle to write this review. I adore Kate Morton. I get super excited when I discover she has a new book coming out. I also love big books and I’m not scared to commit for the full text but this one has left me feeling a little meh. I’m glad to see on Goodreads that I’m not the only person frustrated with not know what was going on for large portions of the text. I dislike saying that because I’m a reader. I read. But I cannot think of another book where I haven’t had a clue what’s happening or another where I was bored senseless for about 80%.

Will I go back for another Morton? Yes. Definitely. One book that I don’t particularly like doesn’t make someone a bad writer (or me a bad reader). This one just didn’t work for me.

Oh, and one last thing, can someone remind me if Elodie actually married her fiance or did she run off with Jack?

The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton is both a historical and contemporary novel about love and loss, and the impact through time as the novel covers a span of 150 years.
As with all Kate Morton’s stories, it is beautifully told with a poignancy that leaves the reader feeling serene, knowing we have been in the presence of a great love.
It is this great love that infuses a house and all the intersecting lives down the years. It is a great love that is drawn to certain people at a certain time in their lives. It is a great love that will impact all the lives that it intersects with. This is a love that lives where it has always felt happiest.
The house in the tale almost becomes a character in its own right as it draws the lost and lonely towards its walls. It is a house where hope lives. “He’d lost his way but hope still fluttered in and out.”
There is a great loss within the novel. It is a loss from which one does not recover. Other losses occur and they produce survivor’s guilt. “The guilt of the sibling survivor.” Guilt has the power to trap us in the past. We “must forgive oneself the past or else the journey into the future becomes unbearable.”
Over the course of the novel the reader meets a great many characters as we learn their stories. Everyone will have their favourites. For me, I loved both Tip and the voice that is the constant down the years.
The novel is a work of great beauty. There are some books that you never want to end – and this is one such book.
I received this book for free. A favourable review was not required and all views expressed are my own.