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bookworm_marija 's review for:
The Last Garden in England
by Julia Kelly
I originally gave this book 5 stars but after thinking more about it last night, I decided to bump the rating down to 3.5 stars - rounded up to 4 stars. This was a beautiful story about 3 women and how they are all connected to the garden at the Highbury House. The descriptive language made me feel as if I am in the garden myself, walking along the paths, seeing and touching all of the flowers. I liked how everything was based on real facts from the early 1900s, during the war and then in the present day. I liked learning about the requisition of properties and land during the war. It was interesting that Venetia's story was written in first person (diary format) while all of the others in third person.
I liked how all of their stories came together in the book but... I felt there was something missing in the end. It felt like it wrapped up too fast for me in the final moments of the story. Throughout the story, the actual designing and restoration process was never really emphasized because the characters were always absorbed by something else or someone else so to say. I would have enjoyed hearing a bit more of the process and maybe even the map of the garden in the beginning of the book would have been an amazing visual since it was hard to grasp how big the garden actually was or for someone with no flower knowledge, the diagram of which flower is where.
The pace of the story was very good but jumping back to talking about the ending, I felt it closed too fast and some items were left unresolved. Emma may have been the storyline that ties all of the stories together but I felt it was a bit unrealistic of how Emma, Sydney and the rest of the characters in that storyline all figured out the story with her grandfather without doing any research and never fully closed that thought. It felt they just brain stormed the idea and then moved on to the next closing points.
Overall, I enjoyed this story and learning about the characters. I did feel that Stella was perhaps a bit more dominant in Beth's storyline but it wasn't an issue at all. If you like historical fiction, I recommend this book because of the amount of facts in the book and the romance adds a nice touch to the storylines.
I liked how all of their stories came together in the book but... I felt there was something missing in the end. It felt like it wrapped up too fast for me in the final moments of the story. Throughout the story, the actual designing and restoration process was never really emphasized because the characters were always absorbed by something else or someone else so to say. I would have enjoyed hearing a bit more of the process and maybe even the map of the garden in the beginning of the book would have been an amazing visual since it was hard to grasp how big the garden actually was or for someone with no flower knowledge, the diagram of which flower is where.
The pace of the story was very good but jumping back to talking about the ending, I felt it closed too fast and some items were left unresolved. Emma may have been the storyline that ties all of the stories together but I felt it was a bit unrealistic of how Emma, Sydney and the rest of the characters in that storyline all figured out the story with her grandfather without doing any research and never fully closed that thought. It felt they just brain stormed the idea and then moved on to the next closing points.
Overall, I enjoyed this story and learning about the characters. I did feel that Stella was perhaps a bit more dominant in Beth's storyline but it wasn't an issue at all. If you like historical fiction, I recommend this book because of the amount of facts in the book and the romance adds a nice touch to the storylines.