My Review:

The Winter Garden By Alexandra Bell

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Winter Garden

By Alexandra Bell
SYNOPSIS
**Welcome to the Winter Garden. Open only at 13 o'clock.**

*You are invited to enter an unusual competition.*

*I am looking for the most magical, spectacular, remarkable pleasure garden this world has to offer.*

On the night her mother dies, 8-year-old Beatrice receives an invitation to the mysterious Winter Garden. A place of wonder and magic, filled with all manner of strange and spectacular flora and fauna, the garden is her solace every night for seven days. But when the garden disappears, and no one believes her story, Beatrice is left to wonder if it were truly real.

Eighteen years later, on the eve of her wedding to a man her late father approved of but she does not love, Beatrice makes the decision to throw off the expectations of Victorian English society and search for the garden. But when both she and her closest friend, Rosa, receive invitations to compete to create spectacular pleasure gardens - with the prize being one wish from the last of the Winter Garden's magic - she realises she may be closer to finding it than she ever imagined.

Now all she has to do is win.

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My Review

My Rating: 5 Stars

This book was a part of the haul I got from Waterstones for my birthday, and honestly, I only picked it up because it was super gorgeous and had some seriously beautiful stencilling on. I thought it would be a cute story, probably with magic, and while I wasn’t entirely wrong I couldn’t anticipate the emotional punch this book would pack. First off, I want to talk about Rosa. Now she’s not the main character, she sort of shares the narrative with Beatrice, who I consider the main character, but I just want to take a second to talk about this woman, because DAMN she was AWESOME. When it comes to characters in the Victorian era I expect a certain kind of behaviour due to the time in which the book is set. Rosa, however, absolutely subverted my expectations in the best possible way. This chick… I just can’t. She feels abused by her new husband in the bedroom, so when she talks to him about this and he tells her to suck it up and do her wifely duty, what does she do? Does she take this lying down? Hell no! She builds a goddamn mechanical flock of ravens (an unkindness) to attack her husband if he so much as comes within five feet of her person or tries to hurt her. They follow him around the house as well as protect Rosa in her room. This just absolutely enthralled me and had me in stitches. I LOVED Rosa and this act on her behalf just really sucked me into the story… so I had to talk about it here, because hell, a Victorian Woman who uses smarts to intimidate her husband and protect herself? That’s just five-star material right there… without the rest of the book.

Anyhow… the rest of the novel packed so much emotion into a society that seems on the surface to be anything but. The descriptions were pure magic and the characters really gave the story that emotional pull and forward motion. I felt so sorry for Beatrice when it came to her friendship with Rosa, and also the loss of her mother. But Rosa… her struggle was one of motherhood, and that really hit home for me. Not because I’m a mother, but because Beatrice also realises that sometimes being a good mother means knowing that you wouldn’t make a good mother, and being childless can be caring in its own way. The Gardens that the two women came up with were just… incredible. I was on the edge of my seat for both reveals, and while I loved Rosa’s, Beatrice’s was the real showstopper in my opinion. Her plum trees, the rabbits which turned into teacups… spiders spinning pure gold? Sold! This book was so magical, so whimsical, and yet the humanness of the characters and the emotional turmoil of both women only added to the beauty of this story. I’d recommend this to anyone, and it has so far topped my list of 2022 reads. I know this one will stay with me, so honestly, go and check it out. You won’t be disappointed.