I've been holding onto Sara Nisha Adams' second novel The Twilight Garden (#1,297) as a treat to read at the right time. I absolutely loved her debut novel The Reading List even the second time I read it. Alas, I was disappointed this time around. I'm sure The Twilight Garden will find its readers; it just won't include me.
This novel about a badly neglected London garden shared by two townhouses switches timelines between two neighbors who shared the garden forty years ago and turned it into a community asset, and the feuding present-day tenants goaded into action by a series of photos of the garden in its glory dropped through their letter boxes. If you're a gardening fan, I'm sure you'll relate. Since I'm not, I couldn't see the attraction of digging into the dirt and planting things constantly destroyed by foxes.
But the real story here is about the characters, all of whom have more than their share of problems and issues. Frankly, I had to force myself to read all the way through to the end, hoping that things surely had to get better for one or the other of them. By the end of the book, it sort of came together with a whimper rather than a bang. There are plenty of books out there that I knew if I read them would make me feel depressed. I didn't expect that of The Twilight Garden.
On a positive note, I really did like the cover art. It's enough to make you want to read the book. You'll have to decide that for yourself.
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