Narrated by Caroline Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The thing I like most about audiobooks is that they tend to be very interesting. This is especially true when the narrator has a wonderful voice, reads well, and knows how to breathe life into all the characters.
This audiobook is wonderful and Caroline Lee is a brilliant narrator or reader. The story is about a 4-year old girl who was all alone on a ship to Australia. She was picked-up at the port and adopted. Nell grew up in a loving home with parents who adored her.
On her 21st birthday, her father decides it is time that Nell learns about the truth. He is unable to bear the guilt that he feels and wants to have his daughter know her real origins. However, despite all the love Nell receives from everyone around her, she feels like her whole life has been snatched away from her. She is not able to deal with the truth of her origins very well.
When her father died, he left her a small white suitcase that was hers when she was found alone an Australian port. It contained a book of fairy tales, and some other small things that belonged to her when she was a little girl. Nell decides to find out more about her past.
She learns that she is connected to the author of the book of fairy tales that was in her small white suitcase. Eliza Makepiece, the authoress, is someone she remembers and she uses that memory of Eliza as the starting point of her journey to uncover who she really is and why she was left on a boat all alone.
The Forgotten Garden is a wonderful audiobook. Although I find Nell worth a really hard knock on the head for being such an idiot -- she had a wonderful family and the perfect man she is engaged to, yet she lets everything fall apart after she finds out she is adopted -- the story is told beautifully.
[The audiobook is also available on Audible.com)
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