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. But, when Grace is found unconscious, and hospitalized, remaining in a coma, leaving everyone unsure of what happened to her, a dark side of the idealistic garden community is exposed, with long buried secrets coming to light, prompting some to take drastic measures to protect one of their own. Adele has a very lenient, alternative parenting style, homeschooling and preferring to let her children make their own choices, whatever they are. She repeatedly suggests that she feels judged by others for her lifestyle. How did you feel about how she is raising her children? Were there points in the book you felt supportive or critical of her maternal choices? The first time I read the blurb about this novel, all that really stood out was: "YOUNG WOMAN AND INFANT SON ABANDONED"....

What draws Clare to Leo? Is her attraction to him based more on her own circumstances or something about him? And as she'd lived so much of her life in abandonment, she found desertion a normal state of being." The Lower East Side, the East Village, Alphabet City, we're crawling with broken people lounging on broken stoops, unabashedly humping in the alleyways and parks, This novel is set in the mid-1970's at a beach front (not named in the novel). This powerful novel focuses on June, a young girl who is abandoned at a motel on the coast with her infant child, Luke. They are both eventually taken in by the motels owner, Mabel who is trying to move on after the death of her husband. Mabel is ready to close up for the season until June and Luke change her plans. It is a very dim and dull journey for most of the characters but the novel focuses on the spirit of each character. This novel will build a long lasting impact on the reader, as it did for myself.When Mabel was newly widowed she felt cast adrift - wondering how she could go on... A neighbor, Roland, stepped in and helped her with the night shift at the cabins and any chores that she was unable to do herself. Now, she doesn't know how she would manage without him. He is a constant and steadfast ally. Meanwhile, Pip began making an effort to get to know her new surroundings. She talked to Rhea and learned about Phoebe, a girl who died of an apparent drug overdose in the park. Rhea told Pip that Gordon, Leo’s father, was a pedophile. Rhea hoped that Leo, the father of the Howes sisters was not a pedophile as well. Rhea’s suggestion made Pip consider the way Leo treated Tyler as well as the way Grace seemed unusually attracted to him and wondered if perhaps he was following in his father’s footsteps. Adele became suspicious of her husband while proofreading Rhea’s memoirs. Rhea mentioned that Leo had dated Cece, a girl who was 13 years old while Leo was 18. Pip drops to her knees. "No," she mutters, "no. No. No. No." She pulls Grace's comisol down, pulls her shorts up. Then she runs down the hill, runs and runs, toward the warm safe lights of the Howese's apartment, toward the grown-ups, her heart thumping piston-hard in her chest.

In some ways, this story is a little quirky, told from various POV’s, but also does a pretty good job of creating a feeling of unease, and building suspense at a steady pace, with a few very surprising twists thrown in along the way. So, overall, I enjoyed the book, although it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, and think fans of psychological suspense will like this one too. Who should read it?: If you like thrillers or mysteries, I wouldn't say this necessarily fits into that niche, but I still think you would probably enjoy it. It wouldn't surprise me if we saw this in theaters in the future. When Clare and her two pre-teen daughters move into an open-plan housing estate (the synopsis touts it as a commune of sort, which it actually isn't), they are welcomed by a host of neighbours and their children. The reader is introduced to both Clare and her neighbour Adele's families, whilst events unfold resulting in one of Clare's daughters becoming seriously injured. I so loved this book for the young people - who really drive the book. Even the adult mums are mostly motivated by what is happening with the children. And the children are the best characters. I think that may be why I am coming to love YAs and stories of teen friendship so much. Stories about 13 year olds seem so much more interesting and at least as mature as those about "adult" characters. And that seems just as true in real life as well. Most to the grown ups in today's world act mostly like 13 year olds. And real 13 year olds make so much better a job of being 13 than those in their mid-years or older who are running our world. Or trying to. Appropriately the most odious character here, Gordon the father-in-law of Adele, is the most elderly. He seems to have the maturity of a 3 year old and as the story has him returning to Africa, I hope he gets ebola.DISCLOSURE: I listened to the audiobook of The Girls (previously titled The Girls in the garden) by Lisa Jewell, narrated by Colleen Prendergast and the author's daughter Amelie Jewell, published by Audible Audio, via Overdrive. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own opinions. 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. I feel like C A Wittman is truly a master of building and delivering on the suspense, and her ability to craft a story without giving too much away has gotten better in the time between The Other Nadia Bisset and 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 … 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.

The Girl in the Garden is a beautiful story. I was immediately impressed by Melanie Wallace's gorgeous prose. Her story enchanted me straight away and I loved the unusual circumstances of every main character. Melanie Wallace regularly changes her points of view and every character has a distinct voice and an interesting story to tell. It felt like I was allowed to take a peek in all of their lives, which is a great way to tell a story. Each person in The Girl in the Garden has wonderful characteristics and flaws, told in a way I found pretty factual. I enjoyed that aspect of the story especially, all of the characters have a strange history and they have their secrets, reasons for peculiar behavior and faults. They are human, but not perfect, which I absolutely loved. I don't need to be nostalgic.....I'm not even capable of such a thing. And I'm not interested in seeing myself as someone I can no longer recognise." An engaging and atmospheric read, Lisa beautifully conjures up the half-child half-adult lives of young teenagers. Jane Fallon There is something on the brow of the hill, a strange shape emerging from the hedge that encircles the Rose Garden. She heads toward it.

SOAP HOLDERS

Sam began laughing too, the room was no longer reeling but somehow expanding, contracting, as Oldman went on to ask: So, what happened to you? - and then Sam’s chest was heaving, a strangled sound came from him as he began sobbing into his hands, his tears salty and the taste of them bitter and Sam unabashed and anguished. For no one - not his parents or his brother, not Freddie, neither Rita nor Gloria, not Leonard, no one - had ever asked; they’d seen him, they’d seen what had become of him, Rita had often touched his scars, and maybe they’d all waited for Sam to recount what he’d been through, but their silence only reinforced his impression that they all, every last one of them, willed his story to remain untold, his past unspoken." I read the 'entire' blurb twice since having finished the novel trying to figure out if I would have known anything about this book from the blurb.

When the family home of Clare and her two daughters, Grace and Pip, is burnt to the ground, an apartment on a picturesque communal garden square looks like the perfect opportunity for all of them to forge a new life. Clare befriends stay-at-home mother Adele and her charming husband, Leo, and the girls begin spending time with a clique of neighborhood children. Everyone seems very welcoming and friendly to the newcomers. That is, until a festive neighborhood party takes a turn for the violent, and preteen Pip discovers her thirteen-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden. Who in this close-knit community can they really trust? 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! 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.Wallace's writing contains a rare intimacy and immediacy, but the past is always present and slowly revealed. 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. Mysterious, life-threatening injuries to a teenage girl cause previously close-knit neighborhood families to examine each other with concern and suspicion. Midsummer night: a thirteen-year-old girl is found unconscious in a dark corner of the garden square. What really happened to her? And who is responsible? Jewell begins her story with a scene in which 12-year-old Pip Wild finds her sister, Grace, bleeding and unconscious in Virginia Park, a communal park behind their house.