The Girls in the Garden

Product Information

Jewell offers an intriguing premise and characters but has difficulty maintaining plot momentum and creating depth of character. THE GIRL IN THE GARDEN by LISA JEWELL is an engrossing, intriguing, steady-paced, and a suspenseful mystery with lots of twists and turns along the way that kept us all reading and guessing right to the very end. We were pretty much suspicious of every character! Clare and her 2 daughters move into a new home that shares a communal "garden" with other families. Things seem fine at first as they always do, but then things turn out to not be as fine as they seem. There are cliques, family secrets, jealousy, relationships changing upon the arrival of the new family, and a 15 year old murder mystery of another teenage girl. This is a character-driven novel at it’s best. Odd, eccentric, maybe even a little strange, the characters in this book kept me in the dark until the end. I had a hard time deciphering who was legit and who was shady.

The book is really more of a study in family and communal neighborhood dynamics than it is a mystery novel or suspense thriller. It focuses on the relationships of adolescent children, especially the girls, with the one boy in the group apparently clueless. 'Boys are so dumb and girls are so mean' seems to be the moral of the story. So if you approach it from that perspective, you may accept it, but there's still no reason for leaving so much hanging at the end. Just because the young victim doesn't want anyone to know what happened doesn't mean the reader shouldn't know. Meanwhile, I'm getting tired of anticlimactic endings. Starred Review. Vivid descriptions of the bucolic park contrast with the evil lurking around the themes of teenage sexuality, perversion, peer pressure, and the desire for a complete family. Jewell adeptly creates a pervasive atmosphere of unease in this well-spun narrative." - Publishers WeeklyPip was my favorite character. She tried to stay away from the "gang" and not participate in all the bizarre happenings of the teenagers. A few of the adults were definitely different too and seemed to have the biggest secrets. While the storyline had some issues for me-I had a good idea how this was going to play out relatively early on-it was Jewell's descriptive writing style and character development that really drew me in. This is a well written family drama with a good dose of mystery/suspense to keep everyone on their toes. There are some really stand out characters in this story. Like every other female in the book, I too fell madly in love with Leo. Of course Leo is fictional...does anyone like him really exist?! :-) Even Gordan, Leo's grumpy and obnoxious father was well imagined, and I think we all have someone like him in our own family. But my absolute favorite has to be Pip. 12 years old but wise beyond her years, with a fierce love for her family that is infectious. THE GIRLS IN THE GARDEN was more about the characters and their personalities rather than having a plot. It was quite an unconventional book but the oddity of the book is what kept me reading. But what happens when a single mother of 2 teenage girls moves in to this tight-knit world? Everything is not as perfect as it seems, and slowly things go off kilter. Families with secrets, teenage love, green-eyed monsters, and an unresolved 15 year old murder of a young girl that was killed in this very garden make for a captivating story that I found hard to put down.

I kept thinking of Lord of the Flies as I was reading this. Children that seem to be basically raising themselves, either because of neglect, a hand off approach to child rearing, or because it is assumed they are safe. Didn't agree with much in the way of parenting here, not sure I cared much for the parents who seem oblivious to all the undercurrents happening within this gang of kids. Pip, who is only twelve seems to have more sense than any of them. That said... the prose was lyrical as usual. The imagery was wonderful. I wish I could live there, but without my neighbors running in and out all the time. I also think the girls should've been 14/15 instead of 12/13, especially given the sexual activity they engaged in. I know what I did when I was 12/13, and while I can understand the point in this story, it would've been stronger if the girls were a bit older -- still underage, but enough that I'd possibly get why the mothers were less focused on monitoring them. Or maybe that's the point; they thought they were too young for things to happen. As she nears the shape she can see it is a foot. She holds her breath deep inside her body and rounds the corner timorously. Still, it was an engrossing story and one I would have rated a solid four except for the ending. Seemed somewhat anticlimactic, not in keeping with the rest of the story. That is of course only my own opinion and up to then felt the story flowed well, was suspenseful because the reader knows where it will lead but not how or who. This author has a good storytelling ability and it is well worth the read. Maybe as a precautionary tale for parents. Set in London, this is a story about a close-knit community surrounding a central 3-acre park, complete with a playground, rose garden, even a secret garden. Many of the people who live here have known each other for a lifetime, since they were children, and many have stayed in this same neighborhood until adulthood, now raising their own children here as well. So the children of friends are now friends themselves, playing the same games in the same park as their parents did.As she nears the shape, she can see it is a foot. She holds her breath deep inside her body and rounds the corner timorously. In the novel The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell, a love triangle, rumors, and bad parenting incite a dangerous jealousy that almost has fatal consequences. The novel takes place in London, England. Clare Wild had believed that by hiding her daughters from her schizophrenic husband she could keep them safe. Meanwhile, Adele Howes thought her life with her homeschooled children and a tightly knit community centered on a communal park offered the best of everything for her children. Neither mother realized that it was the children themselves who were their own worst enemies. There are a lot of present and past secrets hiding among the residents that keep up the intrigue from the first few sentences that tell of a young girl found in the bushes either unconscious or dead.? 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.

There is an undercurrent of hesitation, a feeling just below the surface that seems dangerous somehow. Well, I am going to be in the minority here. I had heard a lot of good things about this book. I anxiously awaited my copy to be available at the library. I waited and waited and waited. Then finally it was ready. Despite the odd presentation and the strange way these characters developed, leaving me unsure of how I felt about them, I enjoyed the book, and found it weirdly absorbing, and kind of unique, which is a good thing! 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 . . . . . The most interesting and disturbing character in the book is 13 year old Tyler, a girl who is neglected by a narcissistic mother. and who becomes jealous of a new girl who seems to be taking the males in her life away from her. The end of the book leads to speculation about what this girl will do next, as she's obviously a very troubled child, yet very vengeful and manipulative, one who may illicit your pity but watch out! You might want to take her in your arms and hug her, but be careful, she bites. All the characters are fascinating and well developed, but she's the one for whom I felt a combination of love and fear, a child crying out for love and affection but who is potentially dangerous, especially as she heads into adolescence like an out of control freight train. Danger ahead, I predict. Would love to read a sequel to this book.This story really puzzled me, and not completely in a good way. I find it hard to decide exactly which genre it falls under - its a little drama, a little mystery, a little crime. Jewell is known for stories featuring complex family and friend orientated issues, which this book does well. However, there is no one lead protagonist, which makes it difficult to fully understand any one character.