frances_frances's reviews
295 reviews

I've read and enjoyed many Lisa Jewell books but this one was disappointing. Like her other work, The Girls in the Garden is well written and has some interesting characters. However, I did not enjoy reading about potentially predatory dads or sexual encounters between preteens. It felt like a lot of energy spent for little pay off or resolution. This book left me feeling dissatisfied and vaguely icky.

This is the second J.T. Ellison book I've read and I've decided I'm not a fan. First, this book could've been about 100 pages shorter. Second, it's basically a less well-crafted Gone Girl.

Rather than clever or twisty, the plot felt both convoluted and repetitive. There was a lot thrown in at the end, including entire backstories for characters that were only recently introduced.

Like Gone Girl, this book aims to examine modern heterosexual marriage but the groundwork done by Ellison throughout the novel is completely flipped and thrown out by the end. I don't want to spoil the ending but I will say that the state of the couple's marriage at the end felt very forced and conveniently neat. All the dysfunction and emotional abuse that both partners engaged in suddenly doesn't matter anymore. Overall a pretty mediocre story with a let down of an ending.