Title: The Winter Garden
Author: Nicola Cornick
Series: n/a
Needs an urgent pace and relevant past POV
Much thanks to Nicola Cornick, Harlequin Trade Publishing/Graydon House, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I liked this book, but there were aspects to it that made it easy to put down. I loved the ghost and paranormal and mystery aspects, and I loved the archaeological aspects. There was plenty of the former (though I wouldn’t have minded more), but I wish they’d dived a bit deeper into the latter. I didn’t even realize sites as recent as a few hundred years could require excavation, that earth could bury them that quickly. I thought it took thousands or millions of years to build up that much. Furthermore, I didn’t realize gardens could be excavated; there’s always more focus on artifacts and bones and structures than natural landscape. I figured vegetation would just rot and become dirt indistinguishable from other dirt. Perhaps it more or less does until you put it under a microscope and run tests. Fascinating.
I liked the history aspects as well, but I did not like so much time spent in Anne’s point of view. It just didn’t feel necessary. It didn’t really add to the plot beyond familiarizing the reader with the history of the site and resident ghost, and we simply did not need to be that familiar with the history. Anything pertinent could have been learned via the dreams and visions in Lucy’s POV. We didn’t need to know Anne at all. Those were the chapters that often put me off, especially in the beginning. I tried to read chapter 8 three times before just skipping it. Perhaps most annoying about the historical chapters was that they were always on the periphery of the important events they were supposed to shed light on—Robert and Catherine’s relationship, the Gunpowder Plot. Anne’s POV was just not that useful. ROBERT’s should have been utilized, considering he was at the heart of it all.
As to the characters—I liked Lucy well enough. I didn’t relate to her much, since I’m not musically inclined and don’t care for salads, which is pretty much all she ate. It was a bit odd that she never really showed signs of the fatigue she was supposed to be suffering from, and I have a hard time believing she would never fully recover and couldn’t continue playing violin later. She might not reach the professional heights she once could have, but…. but I guess no one can know the lasting effects of covid yet.
Cleo was a sweetheart, but I can understand how her energy and cheer could become grating, or at least tiring. Finn was an okay love interest, perhaps a tad bland if anything. He was supposed to be Scottish, but he didn’t seem to use many Scottishisms in his speech. Geoffrey the black lab stole scenes of course, I wish there’d been more of him. The historical characters were all dinks except Anne and Catherine. Anne was a great character, the story just didn’t need her.
The present-day plot didn’t seem to move very quickly. It seemed to take forever for them to discover simple clues, or investigate them. Hmm, I need to research and find the answer, but I think I’ll have a salad and take a leisurely walk first. Omg, it took Lucy SO LONG to start looking into Catherine; Lucy spent way too long, like 30 or 40 percent, ready to walk away from it all, uncommitted to the plot. The plot is only as important to the reader as it is to the character driving the narrative. If the character don’t give no shits, the reader probably won’t either. If the character isn’t drawn into the mystery, neither will the reader be.
The demise of the villain was incredibly anticlimactic and lame. That definitely could have been handled better.
Overall, this kind of novel is very much my type. Ghosts, mysteries, digging up the past (literally and figuratively lol), paranormal, murder—but this novel wasn’t well executed. Most importantly, it needed a quicker, more urgent pace, and a better balance between past and present storylines. Not to mention the past POV needed more purpose. But I’ll definitely be looking into Cornick’s other work! *goes straight to library’s website*
