Welcome
back my Lovely readers! Today we're starting a trilogy by one of the
best selling romance writers of our time: Nora Roberts. Without further
preamble...
Stella Rothchild lives her life according to a plan.
Her plan. And she has spent so much time honing and directing this
plan over the years. Then, as Captain Cold says, the plan went awry.
A plane crash leaves Stella a widow and single mom to two young boys.
Time to throw away the old plan and make a new one.
Years pass
as Stella does her best to adjust to the dual role life has foisted upon
her. Over this time, it has become clear that Stella's life in
Michigan is over and she needs to start a new life somewhere else. So
she packs up her boys, Gavin and Luke, and heads to Memphis Tennessee
where her own father and stepmother reside.
This is how Stella
comes to meet Roz Ashby, neè Harper, owner of In The Garden nursery. Roz
needs a manager to take over the bits about running a business she
doesn't like so she can go back to the part she loves: growing things.
Stella needs a job and has an extensive background in nursery
management. A condition of Stella taking the job is that she and her
boys and their dog Parker will come to live with Roz in her family home
Harper House.
Shortly after Stella takes the job the women are
joined by Roz's young cousin Haley who is very, very pregnant when her
car dies in the driveway of Harper House. These three women are
attempting to uncover the identity of a fourth, the ghost known as the
Harper Bride. The Bride has been a feature of Harper house for
generations, well known to the family and accepted. The Bride has a
fondness for any expectng mother or child, but especially boys. She is
often heard singing what Luke refers to as "the Dilly-Dilly song."
A
presence that has always been harmless turns very scary when Stella
begins to take a romantic interest in Logan Kitteridge, the nursery's
landscape engineer. While their relationship follows the
enemies-to-lovers format, it reads more as miscommunication.
Add
in that Stella is a young and fairly recent widow, we see her
reluctance to open her family to a new variable.We get to see her very
understandable fear of a new man trying to fill the shoes of the father
of her children.
This is an excellent opening to a really good
ghost story that encompasses all three volumes of the In the Garden
trilogy. It is also a heartwarming tale of a grief-stricken woman
learning to love again. And of three women being there for each other,
creating a community and safe haven for each other.
That isn't
to say that I don't have issues with the story or rather, Roberts'
writing in general. I have major issues with the diet culture exhibited
in the narrative (our main character is always body conscious, always
Diet Coke, always two slices of pizza and an extra hour in the gym the
next day to "pay for it." Then there's the cultural politics of some of her
conclusions. I would always have put Ms. Roberts in the LGBT Ally
category, but looking at how she lauds pregnancy and childbirth as an
exclusively female (near) superpower from 2023, so much of this is just
cringe. Honestly, I find myself unsure if this is Roberts specifically,
or if it has become a hallmark of straight romance. Lovely Readers, if
one of you knows, please comment below!
All of that said, if
you're a romance reader of any flavor, if you like gardening and ghost
stories, or if you just need a good ole hit of dopamine, check out Blue
Dahlia, the first in the In the Garden Trilogy.
As a stand-alone:
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
As the first of three:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5
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