The Rose Garden

When Eva’s filmstar sister Katrina dies, she leaves California and returns to Trelowarth, Cornwall , where they spent their childhood summers, to scatter Katrina’s ashes and in doing so return her to the place where she belongs.

But Eva must also confront the ghosts from her own past, as well as those from a time long before her own. For the house where she so often stayed as a child is home not only to her old friends the Halletts, but also to the people who had lived there in the eighteenth century. When Eva finally accepts that she is able to slip between centuries and see and talk to the inhabitants from hundreds of years ago, she soon finds herself falling for Daniel Butler, a man who lived – and died – long before she herself was born.

Eva begins to question her place in the present, and in laying her sister to rest, comes to realise that she too must decide where she really belongs, choosing between the life she knows and the past she feels so drawn towards.

I wanted to love this book after reading and loving The Winter Sea. I put too much expectations on it based on another one and that was not fair. While I liked this book, I did not love it. I thought the travelling between eras was smooth, but she did not stay long enough for me to connect to the characters. Just when I was settling in she would be gone. The twist came too close to the end and I thought it would have been better earlier in the novel.  Overall this was a good but not great.

Author: Susana Kearlsey
Published: October 2011
Pages: 432 (ARC)
Genre: Historical Fiction
Source:  Sourcebooks Landmark
Finished:  9/27/11



This complimentary review copy was received thankfully from Laura with Sourcebooks Landmark and in no way influenced my review of this book. These are my personal thoughts and reactions to the reading of the book.