Karen Harper (1945–2020)

Tara Kinsale was assaulted during her attempt to help her friend retrieve her daughter stolen by her ex-husband. Tara ended up spending 11 months in a coma, her friend murdered and the ex sent to prison. When Tara wakes she finds herself with temporary custody of her friend's child, Claire, and trying to put her life back together. While in the coma her husband divorced her and moved to Seattle. Then Claire's Uncle Nick returns from Afghanistan where he was training K9 trackers and handlers, to take over custody of Claire. Tara's life is again rocked by this and the sudden discovery that she was pregnant and had a child while in her coma. Working with Nick, Tara tries to piece together her past. There was a lot going on here, but most of it was predictable and sometimes excessively explanatory. A decent read.… (more)

Jessie Lockwood, cancer researcher, is called home to eastern Kentucky when her mother goes missing. Her former lover, Drew is now Sheriff and he needs her help finding the ginseng patches her mother might have been counting in the forest, in hopes they will lead to finding her. As they work together in the search and the subsequent investigation they uncover a group of suspects that would like to keep Mariah Lockwood's count unpublished. The book had a lot on the uses, scarcity and value of wild ginseng. It also gave an interesting perspective on the lives of those living in small Appalachian areas. My problem with the book was the way the villain takes the time at the climax to narrate his reasons for murder and his relationships with the victims, while in the process of attempting to murder Jessie. It fell apart for me at the end.… (more)

I had been looking forward to The Queen’s Secret by Karen Harper as I had read another book by this author last year and really enjoyed it. While I ultimately enjoyed the story, I had some difficulty accepting as truth the many secrets that were exposed in this book. From what I can find out most of these were unfounded gossip and straight author’s imagination and while I know that Elizabeth, the Queen Mother wasn’t always the jolly, elderly lady that everyone loved, being asked to accept some of these implausible facts about the Queen Consort was difficult. Eventually I reminded myself that I was reading a work of fiction and so relaxed into the story and found it entertaining.

I do know that she had little use for Wallis Simpson and the former King, but in this story she feared them as they were privy to her deepest secret. I wasn’t a fan of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at the beginning of the book, but as the character was developed and we learned much of her backstory, she became a sympathetic character. I did like how the author showed how close the Royal Family were and how supportive of her daughters she was. As the Queen Consort during the dark years of World War II, she did an excellent job and I believe she had a great deal of influence on both her husband and her daughter when she became Queen.

While I wouldn’t accept this as an actual source regarding the Queen Mother, as a story of fiction, it was interesting and made for a fun read. Chock full of historical characters like Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower and Eleanor Roosevelt, the author painted a vivid picture of England during World War II.… (more)