The Girl in the Garden (Awash with Summer Roses Book 1)

Product Information

Set during the 1970s, this is a novel about people helping people, "The girl in the garden" is a testament to the good in the world. Sometimes, with all that is going on, we need reminding. It is also a novel about loss - loss that damages souls - and the souls attempt to heal... A novel peopled with survivors. We all loved the enchanting communal garden that appears to be the perfect oasis and a parent’s dream place to let their kids play and always have friends around, however we soon learn of the danger lurking in the garden. Two mysteries are among the bushes and thorns that had us suspecting almost everyone and Jaline even suspected a total bystander. We came up with a few different scenarios and our thriller imaginations were running all over the place. In the end we were very happy we were wrong about many. Why do you think Lisa Jewell wrote primarily from Pip, Clare, and Adele’s perspectives? What do these narrators have in common? What is unique about their different standpoints, and how does this affect the story?

It is for sure one of the best reads I have had recently, furthermore, it marks 2017 as one of the best years to come in my adult reading life! I barely can wait for the next jewel to appear magically in my hands.

Blog Archive

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Sam...Leonard - George - Freddie - Gloria -Rita: 1977: soup kitchen community - the Vietnam war after affects. Next, neighbors. Please if you are one of mine who happen to stumble upon this, don’t confuse my enjoyment of reading about neighborhoods with actually wanting to interact with any of you because that is most certainly not the case. However, I am a voyeur at heart and I love sneaky peaks into various family dynamics so stories like these feed my fetish without the risk of me going to jail for being a creeping peeper. Also, any time you give me a place where you can look into multiple dwellings courtesy of a shared courtyard (or in this case garden) I can’t help but think of . . . . .

A couple of little tidbits ...( but not saying enough about ANYONE in this novel- just tasters): NO SPOILERS: The foot is attached to a person. Pip passes the beam from her mobile phone across the figure: a girl, half-undressed. Shorts yanked down to her thighs, floral camisole top lifted above her small naked breasts. Her hair is spread about her. Her face is a bloodied mass. Throughout this novel, I would catch myself nodding empathetically and I thoroughly enjoyed the author's vivid descriptions, the writing that seemed, at times, almost like a stream of consciousness. I experienced these characters, and their stories, as highly relatable and I delighted in reading more about each of them. I give Lisa Jewell a lot of credit, right from the start I felt totally immersed within the garden community. The setting descriptions are beautiful and almost at times unsettling in their real-ness. I found myself feeling like I could totally picture the places these characters were walking. It's a real sense of adventure to be able to immerse yourself in a book like that.

SALVES

June is a young mother, timid and painfully thin, with a small infant. She is abandoned by her partner at a seaside tourist cabin somewhere in New England. Penniless, she is taken in by Mabel, the widow who owns the cabins. This premise, and the beautiful book cover, are what led me to read "The girl in the garden".

And what is it with seat mates on flights who don’t get the hint when you have your nose in a book? Last year it happened when I was reading The Seven Good Years. Yesterday, it happened as I was reading The Girls in the Garden. Some drunken idiot sitting next to me kept asking what I was reading, whether it was any good, and sorry for bothering you, it won’t happen again... I used to read too but I don’t have time anymore, how’s that book by the way … Faithful to the thriller genre, Jewell makes liberal use of red herrings and plot twists… The answer to the whodunit is a sly—and satisfying—surprise.” — The New York Times A beautiful private garden where close-knit families keep the children safe from the dangers of urban London. What is it with all these books with “Girls” in the title? The last book I read was The Girls. Now I have just finished The Girls in the Garden – which I gather was titled The Girls in the UK. And last year I read Those Girls… The lives of wives, daughters, and mothers are what is dissected here and how do we truly know anyone? The Girls in the Garden focused on two families--one just recently moved in and one who's been there for a long time. Tiny Clare and her daughters, Grace (12) and Pip (11) have just arrived and are reeling from the consequences of their dad's mental illness.Otherwise, The story was good. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and looked forward to seeing how the relationships would develop. Aside from the format, the writing was very good. I felt that there was exactly the right amount of descriptive detail, enough for you to form a picture in your head, but not so much that it was overdone. I was able to get a sense of who the characters were and the a feel for the area in which they lived.