El ‘s father has died and she has inherited his home, the Pig Pen. Having just graduated from college, she moves to the small British town and starts a new life. She finds a part time job in a bookstore and is surrounded by friends from several generations. This book reminded me of a Maeve Binchy novel. There was some mystery, some romance, and great characters. It is a cozy, refreshing read in these anger-filled times. Willett definitely left room for a sequel to this book. I enjoyed it and recommend it.

Good story!

Description
Marcia Willett's The Garden House is a charming and heartwarming novel about family, yearning, and long-buried secrets …

Fresh out of university and right on the precipice of adulthood, El is trying her best to figure out what it is she really wants from life. This is complicated by the fact that she is also dealing with the loss of her father, Martin. After his sudden death, El inherits and moves into his home just outside Tavistock, in the Devon countryside. Her stepbrother and sort-of friend, Will, comes to help her through her grief and to go through her father’s belongings. As El spends time in her father’s home, she uncovers more about his life, and the secrets he had been keeping from her and her family. This includes mysterious messages on his phone from someone El suspects may have been more than just a friendly acquaintance.

Julia is also mourning Martin, but for many reasons, they thought best to keep their relationship a secret. So she must now grieve entirely on her own. All she has to remember of her love are the text messages they sent to each other in their secret code, and the memories of their time spent at The Garden House: a beautiful community garden and teashop nearby. It is where they met, fell in love, and where their secret affair will inevitably be uncovered one day.

As El and Will begin to decipher the messages on Martin’s phone, and piece together her father’s long-buried secrets, they are brought closer and closer to each other, to Julia, and to a truth that is difficult for all to face.

El recently graduated from University has an opportunity to further her bond with her father . He lives in an idyllic English country hamlet and she sees opportunity where her mother only see heartbreak. Having left her father for reasons a bit vague,El is sure this is a fresh start. All goes well until she finds texts from a source El can only deem romantic. Living in this little place offer El a new lense to view the world and the people she meets only cement the fact 5gat starting over can be a good thing.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC! I did not finish this book, gave up at about 30%. I really couldn’t get into this book, however, the writing was good and the premise of the book was good.

El's dad dies just as she graduates from college and she decides to move to the small village where he left her his cottage. Her mother is totally against the move, she has never forgiven him for leaving and divorcing her. When El moves in and start to clear out his things she discovers he had a separate life she knew nothing about. Her step brother helps her investigates and they discover they don't think of each other as siblings. A nice story. I received a copy of this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

An enjoyable story with likable characters, this is a lovely piece of women’s fiction. El’s father, Martin passed away suddenly, leaving her his house, called the Pig Pen. The house is in a small English town, and El decides to try to live in the house with her memories of her Dad. When she finds her Dad’s phone, she realizes he must have kept secret a relationship, even though he was divorced. Julia is a widow, who is also mourning. The way forward is not easy but their path to moving on was at the heart of the story. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

After her father, Martin, dies unexpectedly. El moves into his cottage in Tavinstock, immersing herself into his life while trying to create a new life for herself. It's a gentle story about grief, family secrets, and how everyone must find their own way in life. I am not sure how I feel out how the gay characters are portrayed in this novel. But, overall, the characters are very likable, it's a beautiful setting, and I enjoyed it. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

3.5 stars

A lovely story of love, loss and figuring out how to move forward. El has lost her dad and is moved in to his home after graduating university. She has her whole life ahead of her and it is filled with so many questions. She thought she knew her father and as she makes the house into her home she uncovers so many secrets thats he starts questioning everything about him and who he was. She has the help and support of her stepbrother Will as they try to find out all of Martins truths and secrets. It was an enjoyable read.

The Garden House by Marcia Willett was just everything that you could want in a novel. Beautifully written, smart characters that you can help but feel drawn to, gorgeous scenery that is described so magically that you can see it clearly in your mind's eye. The story is lovely, Martin dies suddenly, just before he and his paramour were going to announce their long, ongoing love affair to their children. His daughter El moves into his home and finds his cell phone which has a number of cryptic messages to an unknown number. El and her stepbrother Will try to figure out who the person is, as they realize it must be a woman with whom he had a relationship. As El and Will grow closer they traverse the English countryside in pursuit of this woman, but what will they do if they find her?

This novel is heartwarming and many thanks go to the author, St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC of it in exchange for my honest review.

This book was different than I had expected. It does talk about infidelity and the story is partially based on that information and the consequences of that action. The protagonist development was well written, you can see her growth from where she began to how she decided to live. I do not justify infidelity, but that part of the story helped each character develop and grow. It helps for them to figure out what they want from their lives and each other. However, it was a little confusing the beginning. Confusing because after the first chapter there were various characters that were mention and I had to keep referring to the first chapter to know who these characters were. This book is mostly about the decision an individual takes and how much you are willing to be at peace. She experiences so many emotions and obstacles to get where she wanted.

This is an easy-going, pleasant book with no real surprises. The characters are fairly interesting and the locale is beautifully described. The story is very predictable but the book was a nice departure from my usual choices.

I received an ARC courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
TW: homophobia. Spoilers below!

Back in pre-pandemic times I used to occasionally go to a nearby Starbucks to work when I wanted to get out of the house. This Starbucks bordered on a super-rich area of town. So, it was always filled with super-rich people gabbing over their coffee and made for the most entertaining eavesdropping. I’d overhear elaborate stories about so-and-so selling their vacation home, and so-and-so downsizing their family estate, and so-and-so having an affair with so-and-so’s husband, and the daughter of so-and-so being taken with the son of so-and-so, “which is such a shame, because he’s gay.” Ouch. And not okay.

And this is exactly the tenor of this book, down to the casual and likely unintentional homophobia? This is a story that most readers have described as cozy and gentle. And I get where that’s coming from: this is a book about the relationships between a deceased man’s family, former circle of friends, and his secret lover which aims for low-drama domestic coziness. As a result of the events in this book, the deceased man’s daughter winds up living happily-ever-after at his former house in the countryside. His former friends talk incessantly amongst each other about how to downsize or laterally move amongst their many properties. His secret lover, and this seems like the most British thing ever, is constantly being recognized from a show she presented for the BBC called Cakes and Ale. There’s slice-of -life descriptions of people running into each other at the local pub, having coffee together, day-drinking, gossiping, making very strange excuses for cheating (apparently cheating is something that just sometimes…happens?! And everyone’s cool with it when it’s their longtime friends doing it, especially if the guy’s marriage is known to be bad!? Can’t say I agree, but all right). There’s also a lot of wandering around the titular Garden House looking for clues about the deceased man’s love-affair, using decoded text messages on his phone as clues.

All that is mostly frothy and fun and cozy. But the homophobia?!

Okay, let’s go through what it consists of. There are three queer characters in this book and none of them are handled that sensitively. The first is Christian, the hero Will’s best friend. Will’s got a long history with this guy. They’ve gone through pilot training together. They live together as roommates. They are frequently pilot and co-pilot on commercial flights. Will, to piss off his annoying stepmom, once invited Christian to a family holiday dinner where they both wore pink shirts and trolled everyone into believing they were both gay.

Inviting your queer friend into a queerphobic environment to troll your family members is just not a kind thing to do to that friend? For the sake of argument, let’s say Christian was in on it, and he fully consented to trolling Will’s family for a laugh, knowing the probable outcome, that he would be “hated” by the homophobic family members, as the text says he is. But it doesn’t end there. The main outcome is that as a result, everyone in the family now believes Will is gay, though he’s never said anything about his sexual identity. And the way this is conveyed in the heroine’s thoughts! El’s evidence for Will’s queerness, besides this family holiday trolling, is that Will has a Kylie CD in his car which he tells her is Christian’s (I don’t know what 27-year-old is playing CDs in their car in the year 2021, but we’ll roll with it) and he also buys some pottery for Christian at the market. They are obviously together, she concludes, and Christian’s love language is handmade pottery and Kylie CDs.

El has this massive crush on the Will, but repeatedly thinks about what a “waste” and a “pity” it is that he’s gay?! His being presumed gay forms the main impediment to their relationship, and it’s somehow more of a barrier than the fact that these two are stepbrother and sister. That’s right, they’re technically siblings.

This is not okay. I mean, the “technically they’re siblings” thing is jarring but that’s not the thing here. The narrative makes it clear that they were adults at the time their parents married and never lived together as siblings and it’s uncomfortable for everyone, but whatever. The queerphobia is what’s not okay. Saying it’s a “waste” for someone to be queer implies that hetero relationships are better than queer ones, and that a man’s life is inferior if he isn’t settling down with a woman. That’s a toxic way to think about queer people. It would be fine for the heroine to struggle with his presumed identity in the face of her attraction: for example, internally expressing envy of the lucky man he gets to be with. But it’s not all right for her to put down his identity in the way she does as lesser than a straight identity. And look, I know the audience here is likely older people, and that casually including three queer characters in a fairly conservative book aimed at older people still indicates a cultural shift unimaginable 20 years ago. But if your grandma is reading this book thinking it’s okay to call queer people “a waste” and “a pity….” I just think it’s evident we can collectively do better, for the sake of all our moms and grandmas who want to read about queer side-characters in their women’s fic, nevermind the Millenial reviewers navigating the wilds of Netgalley recs.

There’s another gay bestie in this plot. The Cakes and Ale presenter Julia, the mystery lover of the deceased man, has a friend named Dave. Who is in this book to validate Julia’s former relationship by putting down his own past relationship and his own struggles. When Julia confesses to Dave that she had a longtime relationship with a divorced man who has recently died, and her existence is unknown by his surviving family, Dave is extremely sympathetic. Julia remarks that Dave’s had his struggles as well – his former partner left him. Dave says that it was ‘different’: “Phil and I were like an ongoing sitcom. Everyone knew about it. They were taking bets on how long we’d last.” This hits on some cruel cliches about queer relationships being inherently unstable and unserious. Later, Dave de-centers himself again to validate Julia’s tragedy, saying “I’ve been feeling pretty low and sorry for myself, and now I know what you’ve been going through for these last few weeks I’m quite ashamed of myself.” Julia does tell Dave to feel his feelings. But there’s no need for the narration to use Dave’s breakup to emphasize that Julia’s heartbreak is more valid than his own emotional pain. Combined with the previous sentiments about queerness being a “shame” and a “pity,” it amounts to using queer characters to validate the greater legitimacy of straight ones.

And finally, Issey is a lesbian who keeps pursuing this side-character named Plum, whose lesbianism is treated as straight-up villainy. Plum and Issey went to school together and Issey is, like, literally obsessed with Plum, stalking her around town and coercing her into sinister, uh, coffee dates. We know she’s a lesbian because she has an ex she’s told Plum was named “George” but was actually named “Georgina.” So, she’s not out to Plum. Other characters think of her as a “loose canon” out to cause trouble for Plum, simply because she looks animated and happy around Plum, which is just bizarre. Those lesbians, with their friendliness and their arm-twisting you into going out for coffee- how can anyone trust them?!

Plum, in a moment of alcohol-induced weakness (I mean, the volume of day-drinking in this novel; it’s understandable), has confessed to Issey that she had a one-night stand with Martin before his marriage ended, the same man who went on to develop a relationship with Julia. Issey fantasizes that she’s going to use this knowledge to ostracize Plum from her friends by dropping a “Plum had an affair with Martin” truth bomb on them, so she can drive them away from Plum and become her closest friend. This plot is resolved by another character, Kate, confronting Issey privately in a bathroom. Kate, who already knows about Plum’s affair with Martin, threatens to out Issey’s suspected attraction to Plum, which causes Issey to flee in shame. She is never seen again on the page. So Issey’s supposedly terrible for seeming to be attracted to Plum, and contemplating telling the truth about Plum, when Plum’s the one who cheated on her husband with a married man.

Just for the record: outing closeted characters: not kind or good. This is homophobic. Using a character’s sexuality as a threat that endangers another character? Also homophobic. The long and the short of it: Don’t write a one-note lesbian villain in a cozy women’s fic whose purpose is to obsessively worm her way into another character’s life, making her queerness threatening to straight characters.

Issey also thinks it’s highly stupid that Plum is actually named Victoria yet goes by Plum. Reader, is she wrong?

This was my third Marcia Willett read since discovering the author, who is heir apparent to the Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve Binchy school of books. Her books are usually shorter than theirs, but share the coziness factor of family and old friends and the dramas that ensue in their lives. I am a big reader of mysteries, but every once in a while my soul needs something gentle and soft, to remind me the world is a lovely place, and Willett's books fill this need.

The Garden House opens with El, whose father Martin recently died, deciding to live in the house, called the Pig Pen, which he has left her in his will. She has just graduated university and is a bit up in the air as to what to do with her life. She steps into the small Devon town where Martin's old friends embrace and welcome her to their fold. El is happy for this, as she stayed closer to her father after her parent's divorce, and her Mother doesn't forgive her for this. Her Mother has remarried, and the only bright spot to come out of that is the addition of Will to her family. He is technically a step brother, but as they were both adults when their parents married, he feels more like a friend. There is some confusion over whether Will, who is a pilot, is gay, as he lives with his good friend Christian who is definitely gay. This complicates El's evolving feelings for Will.

There is a small mystery in the background, as El finds a message on Martin's phone which indicates that he had a lady friend in his life who was important to him. But the messages are cryptic and coded, and Will and El begin to make a game of unraveling who this mystery woman could be. Meanwhile we hear the story of this mystery woman, Julia, from her viewpoint, as she tries to decide if she should come forward and confess to Martin's daughter the relationship they were hiding.

There are some small side dramas amongst the friend group which make the story a bit more interesting and rich. I will confess that I did not get quite as drawn into this story as I have some of the past ones, but I still enjoyed it immensely.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and author Marcia Willett for allowing me to read this ARC.

Martin kept one secret from his beloved daughter El- his relationship with Julia. Set in the small village of Tavistock, this is about the aftermath of his sudden death and how El and his friends move on. El's 21, just graduated from university, and at loose ends so moving to Martin's cottage works for her. She's conflicted about Will, her step brother, who readers of the genre know will....There are perhaps too many characters here- I felt like I'd stepped into a second or third in a series because everyone seemed to know each other and I was a bit lost keeping track of who and what was important. At the same time, I liked the atmospherics (I'm a fan of moors) and I was entranced by what Will sees as he flies into Bristol. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. There's nothing dark here an fans of British village tales will enjoy it.

This was my first book by this author and I enjoyed it, even though I was once again thrown by the British phrases (what the heck does "I'm ten and eight over it" mean?) The Garden House is a story of grief and loss as well as friendship and love.

I thought the plot was fairly unique. El goes to live in her father's house after he unexpectedly dies. She ends up finding what seem to be coded messages between him and some unknown person and goes on what appears to almost be a treasure hunt to figure out what was going on. She gets unexpected help from her step-brother whom she thinks is gay. They have never been close, but find themselves developing a friendship.

El's old friends round out the list of characters and each has their own little subplot going on. At times it seemed like maybe there was too much going on, but there certainly wasn't a good ending to really wrap things up sufficiently. The ending just wasn't very satisfying.

I was gifted a copy of this book via St. Martin's Publishing Group and NetGalley.

3/5 Stars

** I received this as an E-ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review, Thank you!**

I have some mixed feelings about this book. While I do appreciate that this book is a lot more heartfelt than I thought it would be, I found that I kept waiting for something to happen that never did. Everything was just okay, It was easy to read and get through but I wasn't completely engaged in the story. I will say that the author did a great job describing the setting. It was easy to picture being there. Overall I was entertained and it was a quick and easy read. Perfect if you are wanting something to lift you up a little.

As much as I enjoy reading books about gardens and romance, this book started alittle slow.
El inherits her father ,Martin's house. There is a garden that holds the characters mystery from past and present.
I was abit stumped however with some of the story lines. I had to start from the beginning again to grasp who was who..It took me longer to read it.
The greif El is going through ,losing her father and unsolved pasts. The real character here that stays alive is her father's cellphone,which holds the mysteries of The Garden House and a teahouse and a romance that couldve been. Clues of Jules, Martins freind,, is alone and hiding her greif and a secret.
The story is set in the village of Tavistock in Devon England.
Will, EL's stepfather's son helps her solve the mystery romance.
By the time I was starting to enjoy the scene, a new one stepped in. Once I figured out what was going to happen, and just like that,the book ended.
I received this advanced copy from Netgalley for my sole opinion.

Reading The Garden House was like a visit with old friends you have not seen for a while. And indeed, some of the characters have been featured in previous books. There is an old=fashioned, gentle quality to Marcia Willett's writing that I really enjoy. There are a lot of characters to keep track of in this book, but the story moves along very nicely.

Opening with a funeral scene , Marcia Willett creates a story that is realistic, possible, and believable. As devastating and sad is Martin's passing is, it is against this back that El, his daughter, and Julia, his secret love, struggle to face the reality of life without him. In true Marcia Willett fashion we become immersed in the world and the dilemmas that both of these women face. As in life, some problems eventually become resolved, while others are left to the future.

A delicious read and a great treat.

Marcia Willett has always been a favorite writer of mine and this, her latest, did not disappoint! My mother recently died, so I saw and felt a lot of myself in El. It was a nice, gentle read. I am sorry I read it so quickly….I didn’t want it to end!