The Summer Garden (2005)

Finishing the series is bittersweet. I SOBBED uncontrollably for hours. I have grown to absolutely love and adore Tatiana and Alexander and saying goodbye to them felt like saying goodbye to a friend. The love that they share is one beyond words. It is beautiful, painful, heartbreaking, eternal. ( )

Maybe it's because I hadn't read the previous two books, but I couldn't "get into" the novel. It was interesting enough, but not something I'd have willingly read on my own.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this trilogy. Read this final book so slow just so I could make it last. Read this one definately!! It's got it all--drama, historical setting,Leningrad, Berlin, Ellis Island, love, love, and more love. And I must say that her combat sequences are absolutely gut-wrenching and hard to read at a slow rate. I was totally immersed. ( )

This third installment of the trilogy is much better than the second, Tatiana and Alexander, but is still stuffed with filler. Our two lovers have escaped the Soviet Union and become American citizens, but are haunted by what they've lived through. Simons gives them a barrage of troubling issues to deal with - trust, post-traumatic stress, gender roles - but it doesn't feel like much happens until we reach the Vietnam War. Wars clearly provide Simons the structure her novels need - which is probably why Tatiana and Alexander suffered so much. With all its faults, The Summer Garden and its two predecessors are still good reads because the romance between Tatiana and Alexander is believable. The ending is quite sappy, but it provides closure and you can't help but like it. ( )

This is the third book of the trilogy (and the weakest one of the three, in my view) - the first 2 being "The Bronze Horseman" and "Tatiana and Alexander". The plot was the main attraction for me in the first two books, the writing being so-so, but in "The Summer Garden" both the plot and the writing seems to be lacking, except for the last one quarter of the book where the plot picks up a bit. Still, all in all, this 3 book saga of Tatiana and Alexander is quite inspirational, and fantastic at times.

One important note: I noticed that some reviewers who hadn't read the first two books were certain that they got the gist of the story from the reminiscences in "The Summer Garden". I couldn't disagree more. You simply have to read "The Bronze Horseman" and "Tatiana and Alexander" to fully understand the plot of all three books. ( )