I read The Book of Lost Hours because of the first line in the Goodreads Synopsis: “For fans of The Ministry of Time and The Midnight Library.” I loved The Midnight Library (and am about to start The Midnight Train) and the Ministry of Time was ok.
Once the book got underway, it was much different than I expected, even though I had read the Goodreads synopsis:
For fans of The Ministry of Time and The Midnight Library , a sweeping, unforgettable novel following two remarkable women moving between postwar and Cold War-era America and the mysterious time space, a library filled with books containing the memories of those who bore witness to history.
Enter the time space, a soaring library filled with books containing the memories of those have passed and accessed only by specially made watches once passed from father to son—but mostly now in government hands. This is where eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in 1938, waiting for her watchmaker father to return for her. When he doesn’t, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her. As she realizes that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories. Until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself.
In 1965, sixteen-year-old Amelia Duquesne is mourning the disappearance of her uncle Ernest when an enigmatic CIA agent approaches her to enlist her help in tracking down a book of memories her uncle had once sought. But when Amelia visits the time space for the first time, she realizes that the past—and the truth—might not be as linear as she’d like to believe.
The Book of Lost Hours explores time, memory, and what we sacrifice to protect those we love.
Like many books, it has a dual time line and at some point they come together and you begin to understand what is going on and why certain things are happening. I admit that I was a little surprised by a couple twists, but caught one almost from the beginning. It didn’t cause me to read the book any differently.
I did feel that the book could have been a little shorter. At times, I wondered why certain things were happening. At other times, I felt like parts could have been skipped. When I got to the end, I realized that those things were there for a reason, but I still felt that some of that could have been skipped.
I’d give it 3.5 stars out of 5.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 