A review by gabmc
The Lavender Garden by Lucinda Riley

3.0

I found this book a little bit slow to get into, but once I was about one third in I really started to enjoy it. Emilie is from a French aristocratic family and has just lost her mother. Her much older father had died many years earlier. After her mother dies, Emilie has to decide what to do with the family chateau. As she is making this decision, she meets Englishman Sebastian, who tells her his grandmother knew her father during WWII. The book goes back to WWII to explain Constance's (Sebastian's grandmother) connection to Edouard (Emilie's father). Throughout the book there is the mystery of whether or not Emilie is the last one in her family, what is the true relationship between Sebastian and his brother Alex and what happened to the aunt that Emilie didn't know she had. I enjoyed how the author transitioned between the two time periods and while the ending was a bit 'too neat' overall I liked this book.