Publication Date: 15/09/2022 ISBN: 9781529100846 Category: Books

The Winter Garden

Alexandra Bell

Publisher: Cornerstone

Publication Date: 15/09/2022 ISBN: 9781529100846 Category: Books

Paperback / Softback £9.99

Mr B's review

A refreshing, fairytale-esque magical realism story that centres not on a romance, but a friendship. For a week after Beatrice loses her mother as a child, she dreams of a magical, enchanted garden to which she can escape. As an adult, she would think it had been just a dream, if not for the keepsakes she still has, and the rumours of other people who have been visited by the mysterious garden. She wants nothing more than to travel, to chase it, to study it. Instead, she’s due to marry. That is, until she runs into Rosa. Her exact opposite, Rosa is an outspoken, self-made American woman specialising in creating magical clockwork. Rosa persuades Beatrice to leave her would-be husband at the altar, and take her life into her own hands. Thus a friendship is born. A friendship that will be tested to its limits when The Winter Garden itself invites them both to participate in a competition to win its final wish. A tiger made of stars, a clockwork phoenix that bursts into flame and is reborn, and a plum tree that tastes of bitter regrets – but, if you can stomach the entire fruit, will give you the chance to avoid making the choice that leads to that regret in the first place.
This book is full of magic and a joyful originality, and I did it a great disservice by reading it in summer instead of curled up by the fire on a snowy day.

Description

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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.

Publisher Review

An entertaining and thought provoking fable * SFX * Compelling reading in this dark but enchanting historical fantasy * Daily Mail * An enchanting and moving story of love, loss and rivalry . . . the perfect novel to read as autumn settles upon our gardens and the icy chill of winter begins to creep in * Culturefly * A mesmerising, stunningly crafted story of loss and the importance of dreams * Waterstones * Interweaves darkness and whimsy, using the contrasts of painful reality and sparkling magic. * Fantasy Hive *