Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - The Girls in the Garden

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell

20 reviews

hjb_128's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

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alex_conners's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I really just don't think I was the audience for this book. It's well written. The characters made sense. The POVs shifts were relatively unobtrusive.

I simply didn't love it.

I don't like the pedophile question being dangled for the entire book. It's a thriller and obviously made to make you feel uncomfortable. It did that. But it wasn't the kids doing kid things. It was the hovering question of if Leo was taking advantage of these children like he had in his past. I just don't appreciate those kinds of plot lines. Then the actual reason that Grace is hurt is because we just pit two girls against each other over a boy who barely speaks in the books is.... just not my thing.

I will say once again that I think Lisa Jewells novels don't need prologues. This is the second time I've read one of her books that was kind of ruined by jumping forward and then back. It didn't let the story build naturally, I already knew the climax, so I spent the first two 180-page waiting for what I already knew was going to happen.

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jesikakaley's review against another edition

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mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Very predictable

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moonlightjuju's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

For starters these kids are bad af, however this book does do a great job at depicting how fast kids are in the UK.

As readers we are baited into thinking something more sinister has happened but,

no a death didn’t happen. I thought this maybe a murder mystery but it wasn’t - so you can imagine how disappointed I was.

Below are some spoilers.
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Taylor is the classic UK mean girl. She becomes territorial over the men in her life (Leo and Dylan), and lashes out on the girls around her. Because her own mother is just like her (and encourages this bad/dangerous behavior) there’s no one to fix how she is. The fact that she didn’t get caught annoyed me the most

The only good character in this is Pip, she acts her age and is one of the most harmless kids in this story. I read this for her and I loved the innocence she brought into the book.

Grace is rude, too rude at that, but to give her a fair chance in this review, she is peer pressured into growing up too fast by the group of kids she hangs around. The fact that she covered for the girls that attacked her was insane, but like Pip said, it allows them to continue to do this to others.

Claire is a bad mother, and not a well developed character. I think all of these parents are neglectful in a way, and have a very hands off approach to raising their kids once they are pass the age of 9. She keeps their father away from them which makes sense as to why BUT this isn’t developed enough. There is a lot of things (for all characters) that happens off the pages and we are readers are just supposed to be fine with that. It weakens the characters and the plot. The only smart thing she did was move her family out of that area because all those girls were a danger to her children.

Now that I’m at the end of the book I don’t think Leo is as much as of a threat that Pip makes him to be. I think he is a bit touchy feeling (in the way of someone that hugs almost everyone) but I do not think he’s after any of the girls. That being said, Pip is just really well aware of how fast all those other children are which is why she’s so on edge.

Dylan seems like a nice kid, he cut of Taylor and I think it’s partly because he knows she is CRAZY. But the closer of him and Grace still being together really wasn’t enough.

Overall, I wish the characters were more developed. The parents allowing their children to get away with putting another child in A COMA is crazy. Adele allowing Taylor to move in after all that is stomach turning.

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c0d3nam3qt's review against another edition

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2.0

This is the second Lisa Jewell book that I have read. (The first being “None of this is true”) If I hadn’t bought this one years ago, I don’t think I ever would have read another from her. After reading this one, I can confidently say, this one is my last.

I really dislike the marketing of these two books. They don’t lead on to the type of content within and I think it is inappropriate to not make the reader at least somewhat aware. These two books deal with very dark and disturbing content. From looking into this author’s backlist, it seems that the majority deal with the same few incredibly dark and triggering subjects, but no where is it warned. The front of this book has this kitschy whimsical drawn map, but there is no whimsy here.

Following spoilers also spoil “None of this is true”.

There are so many parallels between this story and “None of this is true”. Both have men that are objectively bad people, that don’t get even a slap on the wrist for their abhorrent behaviour. Or other characters try their absolute hardest to defend those men’s actions. The whole time you are supposed to think it is one of these awful men that did yet another awful thing, but sike it’s actually a female victim(s) turned evil/crazy/violent. Everyone who could have stopped it or could prevent something else from happening, just makes excuses and basically says it’s none of their business. Or even goes so far as to destroy evidence. There is no justice for anyone in either novel.

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