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 Sally Page!

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And before they can help her rebuild her shattered future, they must confront their own unspoken secrets, lost loves, and tragedies. In 2006, her novel Gardens of Delight won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award from the Romantic Novelists' Association. The Gardens of Delight brochure promises the opportunity to visit some of the most beautiful and enchanting gardens in the Lake Como area of Italy. Tragedy , loves and secrets accumulate over the years and when Libby arrives from London in a vulnerable state it seems a good time to try to confront the issues of the past.

Dual timelines are not my favourite but the author certainly did a very good job of changing my mind. Their adventures take them across to Italy and throughout their lives they encounter love and sadness. Ella, an artistic interior designer, promises that from now on her head is going to rule over her heart.Have just started Swallowtail Summer and am delighted to read Woodside nursing home is featured again… I know am going to enjoy this read so much. She began writing after attending a creative writing course at the Arvon Foundation, and published her first novel in 1996. This was not always done in a straightforward way, for example you may get a number of Bess’s memories before getting one via Elfrida. She was brought up on Hayling Island, Hampshire, where her family had relocated when she was 4 years old. I hadn't read any so when the opportunity arose to read this one, I took it, partly through nostalgia, I have to admit.

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.

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. That is why she often indulges in a conversation with unknown people with the hope that she will unearth something useful out of it that can be used in her writing material. I loved Laura Aikman’s narration, she was superb at all the different characters through the decades. 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'. 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.

In these parts, we follow Libby as she starts to come to terms with what happened and to look forward again. Guilt rears its ugly head as characters live with the fear that their individual actions caused a tragedy many years ago. As she does this, it stirs up memories for both Elfrida and Bess and the story moves back over the years to such glamorous places as the south of France and Italy. With a caring husband, David, and two lively children, she took an active part in both family and village life.

For me as one of those readers I felt that after a little difficulty at the start Erica James’s writing style did allow me to get into working out where in the story the novel was both in time frame and whose perspective it was being seen through.