Winter Garden

Winter Garden
Kristin Hannah
St. Martin's Press
400 Pages



I'll be honest...


I am a guy. A dude. However you want to put it, I am in the demographic that (I assume) this book is not aimed at. Believing this, I read this book with an attempt to keep an open mind. What did I find? That this is a well-written book, albeit with a slow start.

Melodramatic is a phrase that is flung around quite a bit nowadays...and I want to do my part in slowing this trend down, so I will not use it to describe parts of the book. However, this book about the coming together between a distant mother and her two daughters suffers from cliched characters and reactions. I should rephrase...the characters themselves are not necessarily cliched, but they act like the 'type' of character they should be rather than the true character. One sister is the orderly type with hidden stress issues, while the other sister is the adventurous one that is trying to handle her problems by always running away. How shocking and original.

But the heart of the story is about the slow-building relationship between three family members after the loss of someone who was close to all of them and was the center of the family. The coming together of the three is done through the story of the mother's past, and how she must grudgingly share her memories with her daughters, who never knew who their mother really was.

So to be honest...I didn't get all weepy and sad, but I found the story to be emotional in parts. I became invested enough in the characters to want to read how they come together (as for the ending of the book, without spoiling anything it made me want to stick my tongue between my lips and go "pphbbbbbbb"). But if you are looking for a character-driven book dealing with family issues and how important it is to depend on others as well as be dependable for them, then I'd recommend Winter Garden.

Winter Garden