The Winter Garden is a dual timeline story with the first timeline taking place in Tudor England where we meet the Catesby family - Anne, her husband William, and their selfish and wild son Robert, who they contract in marriage to Catherine Leigh, a sweet and beautiful heiress, and the two fall deeply in love. The second timeline takes place in the current day and features Lucy, a professional musician who can no longer play her violin after a virus left her with nerve damage. In mourning for her lost career, Lucy moves to her Aunt Verity's empty home, Gunpowder Cottage, and meets the landscape archaeologist who is working on recreating the Tudor garden which had surrounded the cottage and the original home on the land. There's so much more to this phenomenal story - the ghost of Catherine, searching for her lost treasure, hints that the home had something to do with the Knights Hospitaller, and Robert Catesby's involvement with the Gunpowder Plot in 1605. Nicola Cornick is an amazing writer whose characters come to life in the pages of her novels.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. As a Nicola Cornick fan, I did the happy dance when I received this ARC!

I read previous novels by this author and quite enjoyed them. I was drawn to the tale of the Gunpowder plot, the "remember remember the 5th of November" we all know and love. While a little slow in areas, this was still a great read.

1605: Anne Catesby fears for her family. Her son, the darkly charismatic Robert, is secretly plotting to kill the king, placing his wife and child in grave danger. Anne must make a terrible choice: betray her only child or risk her family’s security…and her very life.
Present Day: When her dreams of becoming a musician are shattered, Lucy takes refuge in her family’s ancestral home in Oxfordshire. Everyone knows it was originally home to the notorious gunpowder plotter Robert Catesby. As Lucy spends more time in the beautiful winter garden that Robert made, she starts to have strange visions of a woman in Tudor dress, terrified and facing a heartbreaking dilemma.
As Lucy's and Anne’s stories converge, a shared secret that has echoed through the centuries separating them will change Lucy’s life forever…
This is a good story by Nicola Cornick.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher and NetGalley. This in no way affects my opinion of this book which I read and reviewed voluntarily.