The Girls

Following a tragic incident, Clare and her daughters, Grace and Pip, move into a new flat in London where a private, three-acre communal garden shared by several families provides the children with a place of safety outside of their home. But during the annual summer party, Pip finds Grace unconscious and bloody, lying in a hidden corner of the rose garden. Who is responsible for what happened to Grace? And who can be trusted?

Told alternately by Pip, her mother, Claire, and their neighbor, Adele, the narrative sets up the attack on Grace and then moves to “before” to provide the backstory for the assault. The “after” chapters tie up the story. Although the characters are nuanced and well-developed, most of the young people are show more opprobrious and the appalling adult behavior is contemptible. The plot, twisty and full of unexpected revelations, plays out to an anti-climactic denouement that is merely “meh” and raises far more questions than it answers.

As with many teen dramas, angst, mean girls, cliques, and jealousy all play into the telling of this distasteful tale. Choosing inaction in order to guard their long-held secrets, the adults constantly imitate ostriches and deliberately ignore what is happening with their children. How is it even plausible that ALL of the adults can have opted out of their parenting responsibilities?

Many readers will have an issue with the truly reprehensible treatment of mental illness in the telling of this tale. Additionally, there’s a problem with the lack of repercussions for the children’s inappropriate language and behavior, both resulting from the absence of parental guidance. What parent allows her pre-teen daughter to sit in a boy’s lap and make out or to curse at her? Truth be told, the completely dysfunctional, smarmy adults populating this ever-more-annoying tale are likely to trigger the readers’ feelings of repugnancy.

The ending is, for many, a huge letdown. So much remains unaddressed and it’s far too unrealistic to think that the police would simply drop their investigation. And how is it possible that, after the attack, everyone simply goes back to their same-old, same-old behaviors with no justice for the victim and absolutely no accountability for the perpetrator?

As for the conspicuously inappropriate actions of the just-turned-thirteen girl in the elevator with the boy she covets as a boyfriend, cue the eye-rolling, head-shaking, and sighs of disbelief. Really?

Despite all that, it’s the over-use of an unnecessary and offensive expletive that lowers the rating for this book. show less

I have become a big fan of Lisa Jewell’s mysteries but this one was just meh…ok for me. There is a lush garden in the middle of a housing complex, setting is the middle of London.

A woman moves in with her two daughters, Grace and Pip, and has a bit of adjustment to the communal lifestyle of the garden. Children freely wander around, into each other’s homes. There’s an Earth Mother sort who home schools and feeds everyone natural healthy fare, her very handsome charming husband Leo and a few dysfunctional characters.

During a birthday party that runs late in the evening, children are still up running around mind you, 13 year old Grace is found in the bushes, bloodied and in a coma. The resulting investigation reveals some show more interesting facts about both the adults and children. I’ll say I very much enjoyed Jewell’s other mysteries more but this wasn’t a DNF. show less

An unusual contemporary mystery with friendship drama.

All the families live close to each other in a community that surrounds a huge park with hidden gardens and paths. The children run free in the green space and in and out of each others' homes with ease. It happens on a warm summer night during the annual Virginia Park Tombola. One of the children, 13-year-old Grace, is found by the rose garden gate in a coma with her clothes in disarray.

This was a slow burner that built up in perfectly paced storytelling that creates tension and suspense as everyone tries to figure out what happened to Grace and who was responsible. The novel is told in alternating points of view between the various characters -- women and children -- who live in show more apartments and homes around the park. Hints, secrets, lies, lots of domestic situations and concerns kept me guessing. I was hoping to believe the best of all of the friends - both the adults and the teenagers -- and many red herrings dangled to keep me on edge. The characters were multi-faceted and intriguing. I found the climax and conclusion quite satisfying and a bit surprising.

I listened to the audiobook while following along in the e-book ARC provided by the publisher. I really liked the narrator - she did an excellent job voicing all the characters and her tone and dramatic flair enhanced the experience. I'd recommend this one. show less

I have become a big fan of Lisa Jewell’s mysteries but this one was just meh...ok for me. There is a lush garden in the middle of a housing complex, setting is the middle of London.

A woman moves in with her two daughters, Grace and Pip, and has a bit of adjustment to the communal lifestyle of the garden. Children freely wander around, into each other’s homes. There’s an Earth Mother sort who home schools and feeds everyone natural healthy fare, her very handsome charming husband Leo and a few dysfunctional characters.

During a birthday party that runs late in the evening, children are still up running around mind you, 13 year old Grace is found in the bushes, bloodied and in a coma. The resulting investigation reveals some show more interesting facts about both the adults and children. I’ll say I very much enjoyed Jewell’s other mysteries more but this wasn’t a DNF. show less

This is not my usual cup of tea. I just don't tend to lean toward contemporary women's fiction, if that's the proper pigeonhole for this; in fact, I requested it because it sounded more like a mystery. And it was, to a degree – something terrible happens in the first chapter, and through the rest of the book several possible suspects surface.

But that's not what the book's about. The book is about the Wilds, Grace and Pip (almost thirteen and almost twelve), their mother Clare, and their father Chris who … is not with them right now. Six months prior to the book's events he had a severe mental breakdown, and while he's hospitalized the rest of them are trying to deal with the fallout from that. Part of which is moving to a show more remarkable neighborhood in London in which several homes share a four-acre garden. It's idyllic… on the surface.

Maybe it's shallow, but I just don't enjoy stories like this. Don't get me wrong – the writing is excellent; the characters are well built; the story is compelling (it compelled me to finish it in a day). It's a solid book. But it also feels like those books about kids which I loved as a kid, the Arthur Ransomes and E. Nesbits and Edward Eagers – those books where children spend long improbably wondrous holidays wandering almost entirely unsupervised and having fabulous adventures. But it's those books with, as one character avers, a layer of Lord of the Flies over all. The absence of supervision in the older books which was a simple matter of allowing children to be off and about in the faith that no one would hurt them is, here, neglect and wrong-headedly determined free-spiritedness.

And it's not safe anymore. That's the part that leaves me heavy-hearted however good the book was. Is that one man really the wonderful guy he seems to be, or is he a predator? Is that old fellow all metaphorical bark but relatively harmless, or is there more to his disgusting outbursts? Is there more to Chris Wild's mental illness than his wife ever discerned? There is no innocence in this world, except among the youngest of the children, and even in them there are only glimpses. There is no murder in the plot, but the incidents that do occur have much the same lasting effects of some murder investigations: things come out which should have stayed hidden, and trust is marred, if not shattered… The Girls in the Garden is the story of what parents do to their kids, and what kids do to each other, and now if you'll excuse me I think I'll go read Five Children and It again.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.

Oh! One thing that must be said about this book is that it gave me a very happy Harry Potter moment: St. Mungo's, where Neville Longbottom's parents are being treated? Is real. (Hey, I'm American – I had no idea.) show less

Clare Wild and her two girls, Pip and Grace, move into a small rental flat in London after a devastating fire and an estrangement from her husband left them homeless. The apartment buildings form a ring to enclose a beautiful private communal garden place for the residents. Full of roaming teens, talkative neighbors, hidden nooks and crannies, and more than it's fair share of secrets, the garden is the backdrop to a mysterious crime which leaves Grace unconscious, in a coma.

I guess I have another thriller writer to add to my ever growing list of authors who have wowed/stumped/blown me away. Jewell has so many complex and interesting characters, each with their own secrets and agendas, that it's hard not to suspect everyone of some show more nefarious wrong doings in the book. Starting off the book with a bang, the opening chapter is Grace being found unconscious in the park by her sister Pip. The rest of the book (except the very end) take us back, months prior, to when the Wild's first move into the flat. Working through the devastating house fire and estrangement from their father, the young girls navigate life in the new terrain of the communal garden forming new ties, and making new enemies. I found myself suspicious of everyone in this book, certain with each new piece of information, that I had sleuthed out the person behind Grace's attack. If there was one thing I learned from this book, it's that you can never really know someone, not if they don't want you to and especially if you don't care to look. The lengths to which some people go to cover up or ignore those in our lives who we suspect of wrong doings was disturbing and certainly can make one uneasy. Overall, it was an insanely addictive page turner with an quietly explosive ending that left me more than a little terrified of what people are capable of, both in committing, participating in, and turning a blind eye to chilling crimes. show less

The Girls in the Garden by Lisa Jewell is set in modern day London. Clare Wild and her two daughters, Pip (11) and Clare (12) have just moved into an open plan housing estate. The various buildings all back up onto a private park called Virginia Park (three acres). It is one giant backyard for the children who live in these buildings. The family had to move from their home because their father, Chris set fire to it (luckily no one was home). He wanted to stop the alien rat invasion that had infested their home. He thought he was saving the world (paranoid schizophrenia). Chris is currently in a mental health facility (they are putting him on new meds). Clare and Grace do not want any contact with him, but Pip writes him frequently. Pip show more is not allowed, though, to tell him where they have moved or any information that will lead Chris to their current whereabouts. Adele and Leo live across the way from the and they have three daughters (Willow, Catkin, and Fern). Grace quickly makes friends with the girls along with Tyler (another girl) and Dylan Maxwell-Reid. Pip is more of an observer. On July 5 (six months after they moved in) there is the Virginia Park Annual Summer Party. It is also Grace’s thirteenth birthday. Pip goes to look for Grace about 10 p.m. and finds her unconscious (and in a state of undress). Grace is in a coma with a broken nose. What happened to Grace in the park? The police are called in and they start questioning the residents. Will they be able to uncover what happened that night in Virginia Park?

I found The Girls in the Garden to be an odd novel. It took me about four tries to get through this book. I have been trying to finish it since June (it was just hard to get into). The book is set up with Pip finding Grace in the park, then there is the “before” section. Grace is found and then we have the “after” section. The writing is satisfactory, but the pace is slow. At first it seems to be from Pip’s perspective, but then it changes to Clare, then Adele (it keeps changing). The letters Pip writes to her father are also included in the book along with childish drawings. I felt the author tried to put too many characters into the books. We have the main characters and then all the strange neighbors (Rhea with her giant rabbit was my favorite). All the various characters just muddles the story and confuses the reader. I give The Girls in the Garden 2 out of 5 stars (I did not like it). The book contains inappropriate language, large quantities of alcohol, and intimate relations (the majority of this is among the kids). I did not feel any suspense or mystery. The identity of the perpetrator is obvious (in both crimes). The ending is terribly unsatisfying (and very peculiar). This would be a good book for parents to read on how not to raise their children. After I finished the novel, I was just disappointed (and felt I had wasted four hour of my life). show less