NetGalley ARC Educator 550974


A great tale of friendship, new beginnings, love and acceptance. There are health challenges, secrets and pain that have been stowed away for decades. There's not too much that a little night gardening won't fix. I can see this becoming a cult classic as well as a Lifetime original film.

What a lovely story about love, family and community. Rose and Frankie are wonderful characters as are the fellow gardeners throughout. I really enjoyed this.

I got interested in this book when I first saw the title. The Moonlight Gardening Club. It hooked me right away and so did the story.
Neither Ruby nor Frankie are simple carbon copy characters. They start out so though, I get the feeling that I’ve read about them before, but that is just the beginning. Soon we start to understand that they, as most human beings, are more complicated. Their respective journey to insights and revelations are similar but yet totally different.
Ruby’s discoveries reveal pain that’s been hidden away while Frankie in many ways have held on to her pain and made a shield out of them.
Both women suck me in and I feel deeply affected by their stories.
However, it’s the side characters that build the story’s backbone.
They are staunch an true, each with their own troubles and joys, but they are the community that both women desperately needs. The Monlight Garden with work, community and serenity is a character in itself where other characters can bloom and the story unfold.
To me character building and relationships is what’s most important to a story, and I get my fill in this book.

The storytelling is fluid with good descriptions of the scenery and characters.

My only complaint is that the hyphenation is weird in places, in the middle of sentences on some pages, but that could be an e-book glitch. I mention it here though, in case it’s easily fixed.

I loved this book and will keep my eye out for this author in the future.

I recieved a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this book set in Ireland about a 50-something widow, Ruby, moving back to her hometown after the death of her husband whom she'd been married to for 30 years.

Ruby thought she'd had a wonderful marriage, but she slowly realises that actually her husband controlled everything, from how she looked to what their houses looked like, and really he was constantly undermining her. He may have loved her but it was a very controlling type of love.

But once back in Castletown Cove (which sounds such a lovely place) she slowly starts to make friends, mainly by stumbling upon a moonlight gardening club entirely by accident, and starting to join in. She slowly starts taking control of her own life again and making her own friends, especially younger Frankie and her young son Dillon who are struggling at the moment, along with a romantic interest in the lovely and laid back Eoin. But there are a few bumps along the road that were unexpected and made her reevaluate her life entirely.

I really hope there is a sequel though as there was definitely a Ruby issue we need resolving that wasn't resolved in this book... and I'd love to find out how Frankie is doing with her life. Really lovely book, I think we all need a moonlight gardening club!

I really wanted to like this book but unfortunately I found it very boring. I think it could have used a touch of magic because the moonlight gardening club featured in the story had potential to be something more than it was. I just couldn't connect to the characters or writing. I'm sure this book will have a lot of fans because the message of the story was nice.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon books for sending me an advance copy of
The Moonlight Gardening Club
By
Rosie Hannigan
to read and to give an honest review.
Sadly, this one was not for me. I found it formulaic with characters who were unrealistic and one dimensional.
The story premise, of a wealthy widow returning to the seaside town where she had grown up in fairly poor surroundings, was full of interesting possibilities, especially given the hints about her childhood best friend who had left the town, having left her baby with her mother to bring up.
The twists and turns of the story were, however, all too easy to see coming, and relationships which ,in real life, grow over days and weeks, seemed to happen almost overnight.
The idea of vulnerable people coming together to produce a garden whose planting comes alive in moonlight through clever use of blooms and scents was a good one and the sense of community was at least sketched in by the author.
Ruby, one of the central characters, learns to re examine her relationship with her dead husband and also finds new love as she emerges from her grief. I am afraid that, as more and more is revealed about her domineering and critical husband I found myself wondering how any woman could be so naive for so long.
In a crowded market of similar books, this one certainly didn't stand out for me, sorry.

This was an enjoyable, descriptive read about the power of community, and the power of connecting to mother Earth via gardening, childlessness, marriages, and even a lovely romance!

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

" Ruby has returned to Castletown Cove after the death of her husband James. The citizens of the community share a garden they call the Moonlight Garden because all the flowers are white and reflect the moonlight. It's a place they go to relax. The first meeting between Frankie and Ruby was rocky, but a friendship soon develops. After secrets from the past are revealed, they even become family. This is a delightful read about community, friendship, and family ties. I loved the idea of a community garden where friends and family can meet and just enjoy life. Thanks to author Rosie Hannigan, Avon Books UK, Avon, and NetGalley. I received a complimentary copy of this ebook. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.