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A review by belleannehews116
The Victory Garden by Rhys Bowen
2.0
The Victory Garden is about a young woman, Emily Bryce, who hates her boring life and wants to escape. However, her twenty-first birthday is coming up. So, until then, she is spoiled, entitled, naive, and entirely too dumb for her own good. She meets an Australian soldier at a convalescent home, and she instantly falls in love with him. When her mother finds out, she forces the home to move him to another hospital, and Emily follows him. She believes that she can become a nurse, like her friend Clarissa, simply because she wants to.
After Emily finds out that she cannot become a nurse because of her lack of skills, she heads to a recruitment office. Here, Emily signs up for the Women’s Land Army and starts her training near where the Australian is staying. She ends up pregnant after their one second of “love-making” and then he proposes. [Don’t even get me started on the “sex scene.” It begins and ends in one paragraph, with no descriptions. But Emily still thinks about the way Robbie “held her in his arms” the entire book.] She finally learns hard work for the first time in her life, but, don’t worry, she’s a natural at everything she tries. Soon, the army sends her to work on a wealthy woman’s garden, and then she finds out she’s pregnant. But don’t worry, I’m not spoiling anything. All of this is in the description of the book on Amazon…
This book is a series of convenient coincidences, predictable plot-points, and over-exaggerated, cliched characters. And the title is entirely misleading. Yes, Emily ends up working as a gardeners-of-sorts, but what she is creating is hardly a victory garden. Emily is hardly victorious in life through her work as a gardener, so that angle doesn’t really work either.
In the end, this book lacked any real descriptions. All the author did the entire story was to tell us what happened, how Emily felt, who she met, and what they said. If asked to describe what the characters look like, or her cottage, or the town they lived in, I would come up short. This author doesn’t seem to know how to write descriptions full of imagery. Instead, the story sets a whole slew of characters and situations, but none of them are really necessary or resolved.
After Emily finds out that she cannot become a nurse because of her lack of skills, she heads to a recruitment office. Here, Emily signs up for the Women’s Land Army and starts her training near where the Australian is staying. She ends up pregnant after their one second of “love-making” and then he proposes. [Don’t even get me started on the “sex scene.” It begins and ends in one paragraph, with no descriptions. But Emily still thinks about the way Robbie “held her in his arms” the entire book.] She finally learns hard work for the first time in her life, but, don’t worry, she’s a natural at everything she tries. Soon, the army sends her to work on a wealthy woman’s garden, and then she finds out she’s pregnant. But don’t worry, I’m not spoiling anything. All of this is in the description of the book on Amazon…
This book is a series of convenient coincidences, predictable plot-points, and over-exaggerated, cliched characters. And the title is entirely misleading. Yes, Emily ends up working as a gardeners-of-sorts, but what she is creating is hardly a victory garden. Emily is hardly victorious in life through her work as a gardener, so that angle doesn’t really work either.
In the end, this book lacked any real descriptions. All the author did the entire story was to tell us what happened, how Emily felt, who she met, and what they said. If asked to describe what the characters look like, or her cottage, or the town they lived in, I would come up short. This author doesn’t seem to know how to write descriptions full of imagery. Instead, the story sets a whole slew of characters and situations, but none of them are really necessary or resolved.