The Lost Hours

My latest read was The Lost Hours by Karen White.

The main character of the book is Piper Mills. Orphaned at six, she was raised by her grandparents. When she was twelve, Piper helped her grandfather bury a box of her grandmother's in the backyard.

After her grandfather's death, with her grandmother in a nursing home suffering from Alzheimer's disease, Piper inherits their beautiful home in Savannah, Georgia, along with the box and all it's secrets.

Piper opens the box and finds a charm necklace and some scrapbook pages and what follows is Piper's quest to discover her grandmother's story.

I will admit that the necklace was one of the main draws for me. I have a charm necklace. When my mother passed away we came across her charm bracelet while going through her things. It's still in her dresser drawer, my sister and I deciding that we would leave it there and if either of us wanted to wear it - it would be there waiting. I absolutely love that charm bracelet. It wasn't an anonymous charm bracelet - it held charms of things that represented her journey through life.

My charm necklace is like that. Every charm on it represents a part of my life. It's gotten very heavy as more and more charms have been added to it. In fact it's at the point I don't know how I'll add more to it and will probably need another one if I'm going to continue it.

The charm necklace in the book was also a representation of the events of the life of it's owners. Piper's grandmother and her two best friends owned the necklace and scrapbook. They each had it for four months of each year and wrote in the scrapbook and purchased a charm or two to add to it.

Until a terrible incident that tore the girls - and the scrapbook - apart.

Piper, who realizes she never really knew her grandmother, begins the quest to find the truth and learn her grandmother's story.

This book was so hard to put down. I read it until my eyes got so tired that the words blurred and I couldn't continue. Innocence is lost. Friendships are lost. But, where there is life, there is hope.

Pick this book up and lose yourself in Piper's adventures. You won't be sorry.

Jody