A Secret Garden Affair: From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes the most captivating new historical romance and family drama of 2023, perfect for fans of The Book of Beginnings!

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In these parts, we follow Libby as she starts to come to terms with what happened and to look forward again. Elfrida Ambrose has supported heself and the upkeep of Larkspur House designing gardens in England and overseas for many wealthy people , and over the years Bess travelled with her as her ladies maid.

A Secret Garden Affair | Jan 28 2023 - event.gives A Secret Garden Affair | Jan 28 2023 - event.gives

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. Read the exclusive early third chapter of The Lie Maker by Sunday Times bestselling author, Linwood Barclay. We travel along with these two incredibly strong courageous women on their lives together and see them become each other’s rocks as they face many trials and tribulations along the way.A story of friendship, classism, forbidden love, disappointments and celebrations, losing and finding precious memories and forgiveness.

garden behind A Secret Garden Affair - HQ Stories The garden behind A Secret Garden Affair - HQ Stories

Whilst I enjoyed how the disrupted timeline helped to answer questions raised in the plot, I would have preferred seeing this develop more naturally, rather than jumping around. I'm pretty sure I'll be in the minority, and I'm pretty sure my late mother would have absolutely loved it.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'. 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. Dual timelines are not my favourite but the author certainly did a very good job of changing my mind. This was an interesting story that explores family connections and the true extent that keeping secrets can have. The author lives in Suffolk and is a keen gardener and this is clearly reflected in her descriptive writing.

A Secret Garden Affair by Erica James | Goodreads

I loved Laura Aikman’s narration, she was superb at all the different characters through the decades. Once again she has not disappointed me… Highly recommended to lovers of romantic escapism at its best. 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.James does a sterling job of dropping little hints about the secrets that Elfirda and Bess have been keeping over the years, but does not reveal the full truth until almost the end of the story. There were sections set in the very early 1980s when Bess’s great niece Libby has come to stay following her fiancé’s betrayal just before their wedding. In the present narrative, they are like two old cronies and I loved the warmth of their friendship, particularly their approach towards Libby: whilst Bess is more mindful of upsetting her great-niece, Elfrida has a bluntness that makes her an even more endearing character.