The Lost Hours

Piper Mills used to be a world class equestrian, headed for the Olympics until she had a bad fall from her horse, from which she never recovered emotionally. When her grandfather dies, her grandmother with Alzheimers quickly follows, leaving Piper all alone in the world with nothing but her bitterness. When Piper’s grandparent’s lawyer brings her a small charm left to her by her grandmother, Piper begins to wonder for the first time what sort of life her grandmother led, leading her down a mysterious path, trying to determine the cause of a falling out between her grandmother and her best friend when they were just young women.

This was a really enjoyable book. All of the characters were fantastically written and the plot itself was show more very interesting. The mystery was perfect. There was enough of it that I could deduce on my own, which I always enjoy. It wasn’t one of those crazy, convoluted mysteries that doesn’t make any sense, but something that could have actually happened in the place and time that Piper’s grandmother and her friends lived. Even though I got a lot of it on my own, the way that White filled in the details was fantastic. I also really liked that this novel dealt with things like depression, death, mourning, fear, racial tensions, and privilege.

This was a great, engaging read. It dealt with a lot of difficult topics without getting overly heavy and it was well-written and smart. Definitely a winner. show less

White’s The Lost Hours had me engaged right from the beginning. The life and setting she created within The Lost Hours made you feel like you were there and among the others. I doubt there was really a character I did not enjoy reading about.After reading The Lost Hours I even wanted to start digging more into my own family’s past. It makes one wonder if discovering the family’s skeleton’s in the closet is worth bringing back the pain just to understand. How hard it is to look back into a past one wants to forget but how free one could feel once the release from the burden of keeping it locked up might be. So the next time you wonder why a person acts the way they do remember that there probably is something much more to them show more and their past.I find it interesting that this book came across my path at this time. It was not too long ago that my own mother said that now that I’m in my 30s it was time she told me “her story” no matter how painful just so that I could understand her. show less

Lost Hours. Karen White. 2009. Every time I pick up a Karen White book, I tell myself I am going to read this book like a normal person; and then I end up staying up almost all night reading it. I did it again. When a serious riding accident destroys Piper’s dream of Olympic Gold, she returns to the Savannah home of her grandparents. She is depressed and lost. When her grandmother’s friend, Lillian rebuffs her efforts to find out about her grandmother’s past, Piper conceals her identity and heads to the plantation. There she finds contemporary mysteries to match the ones of her grandmother. Well written as usual and gently suspenseful.

This was my first Karen White read, and I definitely enjoyed this enough to keep her on my radar. As with most novels that fluctuate between present and past and that allude to a secret of some sort, this sucked me in. I don't have anything against horses or horseback riding, but I did think those references in the book took away from the story somewhat for me. They just didn't seem to mesh with the main storyline. I also didn't particularly like Piper's character all that well, but I don't hold that against the author in this case, as main characters can't always be loveable. Overall, I enjoyed the majority of the plot the most, so I'll continue to look for other novels by Karen White.

This novel is engaging but overly simple, and there are far too many coincidences to make it anything but frustrating. (The babysitter happens to be a physical therapist? Really?) And do we really need to revisit the old canard about the blind person who can see more than the sighted? The scrapbook at the center of the mystery was contrived, and it was very hard to believe that the characters would have the scrapbook for months but fail to read it through to the end. This was a breezy beach read that tried to take itself much, much too seriously, with characters who, for the most part, deserved a swift kick in the pants.

The Lost Hours by Karen White

Challenges read for: Goodreads, Historical Fiction, EBook, Southern Literature

I really, really enjoyed this book. Karen White took a handful of damaged people, put them together and wove an incredible tale of love and loss, fear and rejection. Three friends share a terrible secret that binds them together, blows them apart and follows them through to the next few generations. The secret finally reveals itself when Piper, the granddaughter of Annabelle, has decided to try to get to know her grandmother after her passing. Her curiosity leads to the home of her grandmother's best friend, Lillian, where she discovers people there more damaged than she. Piper was a champion equestrian, bound for the Olympics, show more when the unspeakable happens, but here at Lillian's home, she finds the girl her grandmother had been, and in so doing discovers herself as well as a new family. A story rife with great sadness, racial prejudice, so much loss, it ends on a very promising note--a wonderful story!! show less

When Piper Mills was twelve, she helped her grandfather bury a box that belonged to her grandmother in the backyard. For twelve years, it remained untouched.

Now a near fatal riding accident has shattered Piper’s dreams of Olympic glory. After her grandfather’s death, she inherits the house and all its secrets, including a key to a room that doesn’t exist—or does it? And after her grandmother is sent away to a nursing home, she remembers the box buried in the backyard. In it are torn pages from a scrapbook, a charm necklace—and a newspaper article from 1939 about the body of an infant found floating in the Savannah River. The necklace’s charms tell the story of three friends during the 1930s— each charm added during the show more three months each friend had the necklace and recorded her life in the scrapbook. Piper always dismissed her grandmother as not having had a story to tell. And now, too late, Piper finds she might have been wrong. show less