Set in a bleak town which has so many secrets, this tells the story of a man returning home after many years away, to try and find an old girlfriend. This invites scrutiny from the local police who are dubious to his real motives.

This book starts slow but builds to to an unpredictable end.

The premise sounded interesting but unfortunately this wasn't for me. The writing style was odd, full of spelling and punctuation errors and when you're reading a book that straight away hits you with implausible situations and incorrect facts (that could be easily caught), it's hard to carry on. It read like a self published novel.

When James pulls his slightly battered RV into a motel car park in his hometown, he doesn’t particularly know why he’s come back. It’s not like he has many heartwarming memories of the place or that he’s kept in touch with old friends and family since he left to go to college many years earlier. Whilst there he meets Beverley, the motel owner, and Taz, a teenage boy who visits Beverley daily and helps out around the motel. These three characters strike up an unlikely friendship but when a body washes up on the beach next to the motel, a chain of events unfold that puts James in a deadly position.

This is a very slow burner and I very nearly didn’t finish it as I couldn’t see how it was going to get anywhere. Once the story started moving it was very readable but a bit predictable though that didn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable.

Many thanks to Pegasus Books and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I did not enjoy this one. There were a lot of easily researched errors and a lot of long and convoluted conversations! Comma, after comma and so on. I think the one character spoke a full sentence that took up an entire page and by that time I didn't care about any of them.

The mysterious man isn't at all mysterious and by the end of the book I was just angry I had wasted hours on reading it. There really was no garden or Eden. He just trimmed a few bushes for the long winded lady at the motel. Very disappointing.

Would I recommend it? No.

Netgalley/ March 5th 2019 by Pegasus Books

The Gardener of Eden presents a small secretive town and a man's return after 40 years absent. It's an engaging and kind of creepy story that will hold your interest. A good read overall.

Set a few years ahead in the future, one where Trump’s legacy is the widespread adoption of his populist views and attitudes towards immigration, “The Gardener of Eden” is a haunting thriller that uses small-town mid-western America as a backdrop for a tense, yet surprisingly emotional, story of a prodigal son returning to his hometown to search for the girl he left behind. David Downie’s writing is absolutely spell-binding and while it can be a bit complex and hard to penetrate at first, it becomes easier as the novel progresses and the story begins to unfold. One area where he particularly excels is in his dialogue, with the character Beverley standing out in particular, as she constantly chats and makes pop culture references in what reads like a stream of consciousness. Downie is able to convey her character to the reader almost immediately, using her dialogue to showcase her personality effectively – especially contrasted against the cautiously quiet James.

Initially, the novel revolves around the mystery surrounding James as he returns to his hometown, stirring up animosity from the law enforcement and raising concerns as to his true motives. Downie drops various hints and clues, alluding to James’ childhood experiences in Carverville and how they influence his decisions in the present. Midway through the novel, an event occurs that switches the perspective and the story becomes more of a murder mystery with a touch of conspiracy. Without giving too much away, the story feels reminiscent of The Wicker Man at times, evoking that same sense of unease and distrust of small, remote communities and their attitudes towards outsiders. Downie uses modern technology, such as remote-controlled drones and CCTV, to create a sense of paranoia and fear that is equally applicable to our daily lives.

“The Gardener of Eden” is a curious hybrid of genres, blending a nostalgia-driven homecoming with a dark, politically-driven small-town conspiracy. The two styles work well together and result in an engaging novel that is rich with atmosphere. It is a tough read, initially, but one that rewards persistence as the various jigsaw pieces begin to connect and form a bigger picture. The slow, lackadaisical pace of the initial chapters may frustrate some as the novel relies more on gradually unveiling its characters and revealing the relationships between them. However, once the novel begins in earnest, it becomes extremely readable and the tension is palpable on the page once the threat of danger is uncovered.

Despite my unfamiliarity with America’s Midwest, I still managed to get a real sense of location about Carverville and its small-town personality. A shadow of its former self, and eager to believe “America First” rhetoric, the xenophobic attitude of its law enforcement is scarily believable and while Downie takes some aspects to the extreme, the novel feels cautionary at times – a haunting premonition of where populism and narrow-minded attitudes might lead us. That feeling of being a stranger in a strange land is an effective horror technique, whether it is stumbling upon rednecks in the woods a la Deliverance, or the pagan rituals of rural England as in The Wicker Man, it creates a real sense of unease that I enjoy reading, and Downie really captures that tone in his writing. Towards the end of the novel, things feel claustrophobic and our heroes appear fenced in and unable to escape the “long arm of the law” – it is a terrifying concept, and one that lingers in the mind long after the book has finished.

Beautifully written, “The Gardener of Eden” evokes a real sense of time and place with its ominous warning of things to come. Carefully balanced, the novel is the ideal mix of socio-political commentary and human drama, subtly showcasing the aftermath of a Trump presidency without resulting to fire and brimstone. These are the human consequences of “putting up a wall”, and Downie never loses focus of the individual. A fantastic read, “The Gardener of Eden” is a literary triumph that deserves widespread attention, both as a piece of fantastic writing and as a warning to the inhumanities of the populist movement.

A tale of a cloistered old timber town with more secrets to share than you can shake a stick at...if you excuse the tree pun. There’s lots to like here and least of all the descriptions of the sad, faded old town that is Carverville. The name and town are fictional but based on so many timber towns in and along the coast of California.

STories of one man returning to his washed up town after forty years away are going to be interesting. PArticularly when he sees that the place has rotted away into something very different to what he left. In every sense of the word.
A discovery makes him questions everything and the fact that this is not a town which welcomes outsiders, even ones who lived here and then left. Particularly not them.

There’s not so much I can say without hinting at plot and how things turn out but this was an experience where I was cloistered in that small town mindset , the madness and the growing sense of doom.

James returns home to the washed up town of Carverville after almost forty years away where he takes a job at Eden Seaside Resort and Cottages. It’s not a glamorous job or the happiest of homecomings, but things get worse when James and a local teen find something very unsettling. Something that makes James confront his reasons for leaving so long ago. The same reason, perhaps for the locals dislike and distrust of outsiders? This is a tightly woven, engrossing story about the secret life of a cloistered little town