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A Secret Garden Affair by Erica James is an enchanting dual timeline novel about love and life, guilt and grief, and memories that keep us warm at night.
A Secret Garden Affair :HarperCollins Australia A Secret Garden Affair :HarperCollins Australia
July 1981. As the country prepares to celebrate Prince Charles’ wedding to Lady Diana, Libby wants to be as far away from royal wedding fever as possible. This is a very old-fashioned novel. It's written in an old-fashioned way, and I say this because it contains characters who are privileged and 'other' to what we might consider to be 'everyday'. There's a big old house, left to Elfrida, and there's a Count who provides caviar and a special champagne from his brother's vault, on a boat, during a date. There's a mother who insists her daughter marries a man who has slept with someone else, and the man himself who thinks it's perfectly fine. For me, and I appreciate that Erica James has a massive following, this whole novel came perilously close to cliche, and the layer upon layer of stereotypical characters and situations were too distracting for me to enjoy it for what it is. The author lives in Suffolk and is a keen gardener and this is clearly reflected in her descriptive writing.The storyline covers a lot of ground not least with Elfrida’s gardening but we also see Love, Loss, devastation and numerous secrets that look set to rear their ugly heads. This really was a quaint and charming read with exceptional detail which made everything so easily to visualise. When Libby finds her fiance Marcus in bed with her best friend Selina three weeks before her wedding, she flees London for the sanctuary of Larkspur House in Suffolk where her Great Aunt Bess lives with her friend Elfrida. We witness the passion for creating gardens that sees a character feeling at one with nature. And there is also a grande passion that not even death can break. Life is for living. We need to make the most of each day because we never know when life will be cruelly cut short. I have not read an Erica James novel for a number of years but I was soon engrossed in the storyline and anyone who enjoys a family drama with some twists will find this a compelling read. Erica James does this by having the main story take place during the Summer of 1981 at a time when the then Prince Charles was marrying his first wife Lady Diana Spencer, which gave the novel a fixed period in time.
A Secret Garden Affair | Jan 28 2023 - event.gives A Secret Garden Affair | Jan 28 2023 - event.gives
I loved travelling around the world in the past with Elfrida (and Bess) as she designs the gardens – the glitz and the glamour and the olde world feel. At home, during the war and afterwards, life is harsh but their indomitable spirits get them through. Larkspur House felt like a character to me. It wrapped its magic around me (much like it did to Libby and Daniel) and I felt sad when I had to say goodbye. As you can imagine, the secrets all have emotional punches so be prepared to feel a host of emotions!There are some great characters to get your teeth into in this tale, but my favourites are Elfrida and Bess. A wonderful closeness grows up between them over the years after everything they have been through together, even though they begin the story in very different places socially. Elfrida has always been the unconventional rule breaker, misunderstood by almost everyone except Bess, and their fierce protectiveness of each other is enchanting. Their interactions give rise to many humorous and poignant episodes. You really get a sense with these women that they're having to deal with losing trust in people and are fearful of being deceived again, which makes it very difficult to move on and trust new people that come into their lives. I really loved the setting as the house and gardens are very much part of them as people and a place where they feel safe to start the trust process and dealing with the personal tragedies that they have faced.
A Secret Garden Affair | Jan 28 2023 A Secret Garden Affair | Jan 28 2023
Bess herself lives with Elfirda the woman she became a maid to when she was a teenager, although now it is more of a friendship, than master and servant. Though Liby may be running from the present she may find a lot more about their past and how it affects her.Suffolk, 1981: whilst the entire country seems gripped by Royal Wedding fever, Libby, the heroine of James’s 25th novel, wants to get as far away from it as possible, for on the brink of marrying her fiancé, she has discovered him in flagrante with her best friend. Libby takes refuge with two eccentric old ladies one can imagine on screen played by Maggie Smith and Judi Dench. One is her great-aunt Bess, a former lady’s maid, and the other Elfrida, a society beauty in the 1920s but a deeply unconventional one, who eschewed marriage to build a satisfying career as a garden designer, in the footsteps of Norah Lindsay and Gertrude Jekyll. Its blurb describes the novel as a ‘love story from long ago’, referring doubtless to Elfrida’s clandestine relationship with a glamorous White Russian – for this novel is really her story, entwined with that of the loyal Bess, who being of a different social class has had to face threats of another kind. However, it could equally well refer to Libby’s emotional troubles. July, 1981. The country is working itself into a frenzy in the run-up to the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, but the last thing Libby wants to think about is weddings. Having just discovered, three weeks before their wedding, that her fiancé Marcus has been sleeping with her best friend Selina, Libby heads for the comforting presence of Larkspur House, the home of famous garden designer Elfrida Ambrose and Libby's great-aunt Bess - the only place where she has ever felt truly at home. A Secret Garden Affair for me is the type of novel that I enjoy reading as it allows you to see Elfrida and Bess as two old ladies which Libby sees them as now, Then Allows both the reader and other characters to find out about their lives and the decisions they made during events and the repercussions that comes down the generations. From the Sunday Times bestselling author Erica James comes a captivating story that sweeps through sixty years of history, love, and family drama. Readers love A Secret Garden Affair: Elfrida is certainly a character who didn’t conform to society’s expectations but carved her own path, whether in the parts of the book set in the past or the relatively more modern 1980s. I thought she was a terrific creation and I loved her feistiness and refusal to do what others expected of her. I particularly liked her friendship with Bess who worked for Elfrida originally as a ladies’ maid. The women had shared many life events and were the keepers of each others secrets. They had become so much more than employer and employee over the years and were a huge support for each other.
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