I selected this book to fulfill one of the prompts for the Popsugar Reading challenge of 2026 - which called for one of the books to have a garden playing a seminal role in the novel. I didn't want to re-read The Secret Garden, so here we are.
Harriet has always been considered odd. Her father has gone missing and so she ultimately takes advantage of the newfound and unexpected freedom afforded to her by his disappearance. She forges her own path, by hanging out in her own home and tending to her garden. However, when an inspector appears and begins to question her father's disappearance, she becomes acutely aware of how truly vulnerable that she as a woman in the Victorian era is. She puts her trust in people that perhaps she shouldn't have and here we have the conundrum: being caught and trying to solve a mystery.
There's a lot of mystery to cover - what happened to her dad and mom, why a strange man is courting her and what happens to her. The mysteries move very, very slowly in unfolding. I found it to move almost so slowly that I was losing interest. And then we have the answers explode in one very big explosion at the end of the book and by the time that this happened, I honestly didn't care at all. I had lost so much interest and didn't care. The garden was such an instrumental part of the book, but I never really fully understood why and wanted more of an explanation.
Not a great read and I was happy when I was done. On to the next!
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