A review by prismreads
The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell

4.0

I received this as a gift a few years back and never got around to reading it. Well, it was well worth the wait. The cast of characters are lively and engaging and after the first few pages keeping track of everyone was a breeze despite the large ensemble. Pip is darling and I wouldn't have been mad if the whole book was from her POV, but I loved reading Adele's as well.

Initially a slow start the book does quickly draw you in and at the end I simply couldn't read fast enough! I had to know if my theory was correct. I was worried that with how it had been set up that there would be no logical line of thought for the reader to make the connections and solve the mystery if you will. While some of the revelations do come much later, it still leads to a satisfying conclusion.

As a heads up, the book touches on loads of sensitive topics (sexual assault tw, pedophilia tw, suicide tw, are the main ones) but does so in a way that while not perfect, was palatable to a survivor of similar things myself. The 'consequences' of the actions in the story left something to be desired and the epilogue felt like it could have been expanded on to resolve that.

A solid read that left me feeling satisfied if not a bit bittersweet. There are still some loose ends I wish had been more concretely solved but nothing that impacted the 'main' story.