Review by New York Times Review
AT FIRST, THE gated two-acre communal garden in central London appears idyllic. Bordered by private residences, Virginia Park is an urban experiment, a place where the inhabitants of grand stucco-fronted mansions and down-market apartment buildings can lay claim to the same rose garden and playground. The idea of a private oasis appeals deeply to Clare Wild, who moves to the neighborhood with her two daughters, 13-year-old Grace and 12-year-old Pip, after her schizophrenic husband, who has burned down their home, is institutionalized. While Clare struggles to adjust to life as a single parent, her daughters try to gain acceptance into a clique of young teenagers, a group that includes three sisters who live in the mansion end of the park and, from much humbler abodes, a spiky pixie of a girl named Tyler and a sweet mixed-race boy named Dylan - kids who are free to disappear into one another's homes with little interference or oversight from their trusting parents. Adele Howes, the bohemian mother of the three sisters - all named after plants - considers the park an "unpaid babysitter. Her children were safe out there." She home-schools her daughters, cooks them wholesome food and does her best to shelter them from the vacuous "mainstream world" by denying them access to social media or smartphones. Adele wants to keep her children in a bubble, but she doesn't stop to consider what else that bubble might enclose. Jewell has explained that the conceit for "The Girls in the Garden," her 13th novel, was borrowed from real life: Her family's home abuts just such a communal garden. As I sat reading the novel in my postage-stamp-size yard in Berkeley, the idea of having access to a vast yet private space - a place where my young daughters would never want for a playmate and I'd never lack for company after a solitary day of writing - filled me with envy. But Jewell's fictitious utopia soon took on baleful overtones. When a longtime resident asks Adele to edit her memoir, she discovers disturbing secrets about several prominent denizens, including her own husband. "Things happen in that park differently to how they happen in the real world. Different rules apply," one character tells the stunned Adele, a statement that will prove ominously prescient. Certainly the longest shadow is cast by the unresolved death of 15-year-old Phoebe Rednough, whose body was found outside the rose garden two decades earlier. Was her demise the result of an overdose? Of foul play? The official cause was never determined, the evidence simply ruled "inconclusive," but suspicions linger. On the night of Virginia Park's annual summer party, held a few months after Clare and her girls move in, neighborly relations are frayed when one boozy mother forgets to self-censor, a teenager concocts a devious plot to rid herself of a romantic rival, and Clare's older daughter is found bleeding and unconscious in the same place where Phoebe died. The twinned mysteries of Phoebe's death and Grace's assault provide the major tensions of the plot. Jewell offers up a rogues' gallery of suspects for each crime, but focuses on the violence against Grace. Who's responsible? The pervy grandpa with the prosthetic foot? The hot dad who dances to "Blurred Lines" at a dinner party? An intruder? Faithful to the thriller genre, Jewell makes Uberal use of red herrings and plot twists. But the story often gets bogged down in relationship details, never gathering enough momentum to become a true page-turner. Still, the answer to the whodunit is a sly - and satisfying - surprise. JULIA SCHEERES'S most recent book is "A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown." She is currently working on a novel.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 11, 2016]
Review by Library Journal Review
Jewell (The Third Wife) crafts another page-turner that keeps the suspense flowing. Thirteen-year-old Grace Wild is found injured and potentially assaulted after a party in the rose garden of her central London housing community. Pip discovers her older sister, and when Grace comes to, she is unable to remember what happened to her. Has she been harmed by her first boyfriend? Or by her friend's grandfather, who was suspected long ago of assaulting another young woman? Other possible attackers include her friend's father, who's perceived as being too close to other neighborhood daughters, and her own mentally unstable father. Jewell sharply evades the truth while bouncing the story among multiple characters' perspectives. The book's conclusion will leave readers saying, "Of course that's whodunit" after ricocheting about with uncertainty. The author slices our attention among distinctive characters with lovely descriptions and the lilting Britspeak that enchants so many Americans. VERDICT Recommended for lovers of mysteries built on the complexities of family and the dismantling of the idea that being part of a community keeps us safe. [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/15.]-Jennifer M. Schlau, Elgin Community Coll., IL © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Mysterious, life-threatening injuries to a teenage girl cause previously close-knit neighborhood families to examine each other with concern and suspicion. Displaced after their father's psychotic break, during which he burned down their house, young teenagers Pip and Grace move with their mother, Clare, to a London community steeped in multigenerational family drama stemming from the unexplained death of a 15-year-old girl in the communal garden years earlier. Pip's deep longing for her absent father and concern about her sister's new friendsthe other teenagers in the communityare conveyed through letters to her father. This teenage narrative perspective is balanced with those of Adele, a neighborhood mother who home-schools her three teenage daughters, and, to a lesser extent, Clare as she considers whether to reconnect with her husband upon his release from the hospital. The novel is split into sections: the opening features Pip finding a violently injured and unconscious Grace in the park following a community party, and the following sections explore the complex adult and teenage relationships both leading up to the attack and following it. Although Grace survives, the community is reminded of the unsolved death of a teenage girl who was related to or known by many of the adults in the neighborhood, which makes them question how well they know each other or their children's friends. While Jewell creates a story ripe with anticipation and emotion, she ultimately fails to develop a climax that would bring together the several dramatic tropes at work (a mentally unstable father who believes he hears rodents in the walls; the tensions between teenage girls, especially when it comes to friendships and dating). The reader is left trying to reconcile the adult characters' actions with the insufficient explanations of their motivations. Jewell offers an intriguing premise and characters but has difficulty maintaining plot momentum and creating depth of character. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
