The Girls In The Garden by Lisa Jewell – 320 pages
ARC from Netgalley and Atria Books
Book Blurb:
Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people’s houses. You’ve known your neighbors for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe. But are they really?
On a midsummer night, as a festive neighborhood party is taking place, preteen Pip discovers her thirteen-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden. What really happened to her? And who is responsible?
My Review: 3 stars
The Girls In The Garden is a mystery with many characters that are all odd enough to have been part of the crime. We know from the very start that some type of crime has been committed and thus the story unfolds.
We heard from three POVs but none of them were necessarily reliable narrators. From those three there was no main protagonist and that sometimes led to choppy reading. The characterizations of the many flawed and peculiar residents living around the park was what kept me involved in this story. Of course I wanted to know ‘who-done-it’ but the layers of information we learned about the characters is what I enjoyed most about the book.
The plot was filled with important issues such as the innocence we faultily believe our children have, untreated mental illness, sexual promiscuity, home-schooling, community, fitting in at any age and what we really know about our kids, friends and family. Sadly though, the storyline seems to lose itself about halfway though and moved far to slow with an ending that didn’t satisfy me at all. It was too neat with no dramatic twists that make for a fulfilling mystery.
Her earlier book, The House We Grew Up In, which was a fan favorite on my Facebook Tell Me What You’re Reading Tuesday, is still on my TBR list and I will definitely get to it.
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