The Garden Of Forgotten Wishes by Trisha Ashley
Published by Bantam Press
3 stars ⭐⭐⭐
Gardener Marnie
wants to put down roots having escaped to France from a controlling marriage, she
decides she needs a fresh start and gets a job in a rural west Lancashire
village which her dying mother made her promise to stay away from.
The job comes with
a flat above a café run by two sisters, and she tends their garden, and also
assists next door neighbour Ned Mars with his.
Marnie remembers
Ned from her college days but he’s far from the untroubled man she once knew. A
recent relationship has left him with a heart as bruised as her own.
This is a lovely
cosy read especially if you love gardening, and even if you don’t, it’s a nice,
heart-warming story.
I particularly
loved the fact that I recognised characters from a previous book “The Christmas
Invitation”, and I thought the tie in was a lovely touch, although saying that,
this is a stand alone story, and you won’t feel like you’ve missed anything if
you haven’t read the previous book, it’s just like an Easter Egg on a DVD!
The characters were believable, and well written, I
particularly loved Marnie, and wanted to put a friendly arm around her shoulder
and protect her, although I don’t think she needed it, as her confidence grew
alongside the forgotten roses in the garden!
There is an involved back story including many feuds and fights from previous generations which I found quite difficult to get my head round, but bear with it, as it’s all explained at the end!
This is a slow burner of a story, which was quite
nice as it didn’t feel like everything was thrown into the pot all at once, and
saying that the story did gather speed at the end.
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