A magical garden . . . four stories are woven into one.Josie is independent and self-sufficient. She is content with the life she has rebuilt for herself, but her body is saying something else. Her health is troubling her and she has to face her problems as she can’t keep pretending that everything is okay. Will she find the courage to look for answers?Georgie is an adventurous free spirit and is … free spirit and is always on the move. Her van is her home and companion, until she comes into town and finds all her certainties questioned. Will she find a real home?
Alison is controlling and is tired of her golden cage. Her marriage is on the rocks and who she thought she was, is changing. Will she find out who she really is?
Bethanne is warm and kind. Her Tea Shop is becoming a success thanks to her skills as a baker and her welcoming personality. Despite her achievements she still suffers from self-esteem issues. She wants to find love, but doesn’t think she deserves it. Will she be able to let love find her?
The Green Frog Community Garden shows them that a community is built on the magic of coming together.
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Women Finding Healing, Family, and Love in the Community Garden
This is a nice story about various women who find healing and growth. In the center of all of this is a small town with a Community Garden. It is a lovely story with good people, bad people, and loving people. The ending was really anticlimactic and not unexpected in any fashion. All in all, a good and fluffy book to read. I received this ARC book for free from Book Sirens and this is my honest review.
I received a free electronic copy of this novel from BookSirens and Rose Finches. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. This is an excellent book to soothe that savage beast that occasionally keeps you up nights. It was an excellent change of pace from news stories featuring the D. C. nonsense, the Corvid Pandemic, and the George Floyd protests and riots we have experienced this spring and summer. It even got my though depression lassitude and back into my own special garden. Ah, Serenity.
Told from four points of view, this gives us a very well rounded picture of modern village life in western Canada.
Josie is an older single woman in rocky health who has, for years, been the sole gardener in the town’s Green Frog Community Garden, but between efforts to placate the city council with more direct community participation in the garden and Josie’s debilitating exhaustion she has reluctantly agreed to put out a call for volunteers.
Georgie is a mid-20’s restless spirit living in her VW camper named Susie, and following the lifestyle she shared with her deceased single father, shifting locations with the wind, taking temporary jobs as needed to fuel her own restlessness and Susie’s gasoline bills and self-educating through reading and exploration. Something about this little town (and her boss Jim) seems to be holding her attention as she works in the pub, living in a small apartment above it, with odd trips through the area in Susie between lunch and dinner shifts. Her need to keep moving seems to be weakening.
Bethanne is the owner and only employee of her Cosy Tea Shop, which is doing well though only about a year old. Between doing all the baking and making and serving teas and coffees, she is feeling run off her feet, and though her sister occasionally drops by to help, she is leaving soon to return to Las Angeles and her own life there. Bethanne is considering the pluses and negatives of hiring help, at least part-time, but hesitant to commit a part of her rather small profit margin to that sort of steady drain – what if she has a slow couple of months?
Alison is a woman born to wealth, married for a few years to a man who works in ‘the city’ though they both wanted to move to this country village shortly after their marriage. Despite trying there has not been any sigh of offspring, and John is spending more of the week staying over in their apartment in the city leaving her on her own in their big lonely house. Alison begins walking and having tea at The Cosy Tea Shop, and meeting locals while she finds a friendship with Bethanne that she has never experienced before. Both she and John were raised to share only limited pieces of themselves with acquaintances, to stay amount their social peers, and keep it all casual. She is beginning to really enjoy leaving that attitude behind.
An interesting and satisfying read. I can recommend it comfortably to friends and family.
pub date April 24, 2020