‘the tree doctor‘ is set during the covid pandemic, which is a topic i wouldn‘t necessarily be super keen to read about (still too close!) but thought was dealt with really well in the novel - the depictions of online university felt almost too real and really put me back in that time. i was also a big fan of how the garden was used as a metaphor to illustrate the protagonist‘s inner life throughout the novel. however, i still struggled to connect with the book and couldn‘t really grasp the characters, which is a shame considering there‘s actually so few of them and the novel is very much introspective rather than plot-driven. i did like how the author explored a middle-aged woman‘s sexuality and thought this felt like a very honest and realistic portrayal, but it wasn‘t enough to really hold my attention.

This book was not a favorite for me. "Awkward" is the word that keeps coming to mind as I try to describe it. The storyline seemed disjointed, and the characters were awkward. Even the audiobook narration felt a bit off... she often didn't switch voices in the right spot, and the phrasing was... well, awkward.

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for allowing me early access to the ARC audiobook edition of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC of this book.

The main character in this book is Japanese-American mother who travels back to the United States to care for her ailing mother and gets stuck in the pandemic, while her kids and husband are across the ocean. This is a book about self-discovery and that was something I feel like the author showed well. I liked how the main character started devoting herself to taking care of the tree in her childhood home. I didn’t like the romance and wished she could have found herself in other ways.

Hard to keep up with as I was not ready for the shifts in tone; however glad to finish. Unique view on stressful life circumstances, but also includes sometimes out of place erotica. I would read more from this author.

Our unnamed main character is a Japanese American middle-aged woman who has traveled back to her childhood home to obtain care for her elderly mother. The pandemic hits, and now she is across the ocean from her husband and children, while her mother has just transitioned to a nursing home. She shelters alone in the place she grew up, near the California coast. She preoccupies herself with teaching a virtual class on The Tale of Genji, as well as tending to her mother's beloved but neglected garden. A unique tree she calls Einstein appears dormant, and she seeks to bring it back to life, engaging the interest of a man at a nearby plant nursery known as the Tree Doctor. A relationship blossoms, and we behold an intimate portrait of a woman rediscovering her body and unearthing her inner strength during the otherwise isolating era of the global pandemic.

What I enjoyed:
🌳 Beautiful writing laying bare the inner world of the main character experiencing varied emotions and self-discovery
🌸 The main character being a middle-aged woman, a less than common MC demographic and perspective so deeply explored
🐦 The descriptions of the garden and observations of the natural world, and how they reflected her own condition and growth
🌲The relationship with the Tree Doctor grounds her with sensuality after so many years of loneliness, but he is not a hero or savior. She grows not because of him, but because of the self-examination she undertakes during this unprecedented time in her life.

Other thoughts:
🔥 There are explicit sex scenes, but they are more visceral and introspective than erotic.
😷 Sometimes the dialogue felt awkward or unnatural, but I do think it suited the voice of the repressed main character venturing outside her comfort zone.
🏡 It started slow-paced and early on I was tempted to set it down, but it grew on me and has a satisfying conclusion.
⛈️ The audiobook narrator has a beautiful voice, but the intonation was sometimes mechanical and stilted.

Overall, I recommend! Thanks to Dreamscape Media and Netgalley for the advanced audiobook in exchange for my honest review!

The Tree Doctor was an enjoyable listen. I was not expecting quite so much romance, but I appreciated the fire references and the idea of coming back home.

"The Tree Doctor" by Marie Mutsuki Mockett is literary fiction, historical fiction, and romance. It is set during the Corona Virus pandemic in 2020, so in that sense it is historical fiction, though it is pretty much modern day. It is primarily a fictional
memoir.

The unnamed main character, a not quite middle aged Japanese- American (I think) woman is home in Carmel, California, visiting her elderly mother when the pandemic lockdown happens and she is stuck there, apart from her family in Hong Kong, China. This tears her apart. She spends a lot of time in her mother's beautiful gardens with the many trees, flowers, and birds. She enlists the help of the tree doctor to consult about the trees on the property and in time this becomes an erotic friendship.

The relationship with Dean, the Tree Doctor has a similar vibe to the one in the novel "Bridges of Madison County" by Robert James Waller. There is a lot of sex in this book, but it's rather cerebral, not pornographic. Her tree doctor is "a Lothario, a gigalo, a womanizer," and her lover.

She teaches "The Tale of Genji" over the internet and there is a lot of discussion about this book, which I haven't read.

She experiences the Wildfires, including the threat, the heat, the difficulty breathing. At one point she gets trapped in a
traffic jam in the valley with fire all around. It was horrific!

People who like memoirs and period pieces may like this. Anyone who likes cerebral romance and/or great description of gardens and nature might enjoy it.

June Angela did a very good job with the narration.

Characters 5/5
Writing 4/5
Plot 3/5
Pacing 4/5 realistic
Unputdownability 3/5
Enjoyment 4/5
Narration 5/5
Cover 4/5

Thank you to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for providing this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

uhmm I had some problems listening to this audiobook, the person reading while she sounded right for the part, her reading was a bit lacking… it was almost monotone, at least for me… so even the book not being that long for me it was twice the size…

this book is more on the romance side, for me this one bored me a bit, it was full of “and then she”, “she slide”, “she said” I really felt disconnected with the main character… the story is ok, Just is not for everyone, and after finishing I feel a bit empty and wish I had read something else…

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media, for the free AAC and this is my honest opinion.

I’ve had to take my time to compose this review — to digest what I have read and decide how I feel about it .
This book does make you think and sucks you into the story of our anonymous narrator — a woman who’s come back to her family home in California— leaving her daughters and husband in Hong Kong — she’s there to help transition her mother to a care home due to dementia when she is unable to to return to her family due to COVID -19 — the book covers her 9 months separated from her family — her experience teaching Japanese literature online , caring for her mothers garden, her relationship with the arborist who comes often to help her , her family relationships, and surviving the California fires.
There is definitely erotica in this book — but it is not grotesquely written- it is tactfully done and felt realistic and contextual—which I appreciated.
The audiobook narrator was excellent in her calm voice and telling of the story — it was like being in the characters head their deeper thoughts and feelings — which was captivating — making you hold on to find out her outcome. The book is overall well written with a very human main character - with extensive observations and reflections on how people cope under stressful situations.

Thanks to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for this ARC . This is my honest review.

kudos to this book for inducing so many eye rolls on my part in such little time. yet another novel that portrays contemporary humanities students as privileged snowflakes with zero media literacy and who refuse to engage with materials depicting 'troubling' things and whose criticism of said materials can be boiled down to their inability to realize or concede that portrayal doesn't mean endorsement. of course, in this novel the snowflake in question is a white blonde, who is 'triggered' by the rapes occurring in the tale of genji. our narrator is puzzled by this! it doesn't compute! young ppl are so self-centered that even in their analysis of a piece of media they have to make it about themselves! that we have a voice of reason amidst the sheep, a student who knows of a thing called historical context!
sure, some students/young ppl are or perform oversensitivity, so why not have fiction poking fun of them (there is a scene in <i>american fiction</i> that does so quite effectively). but here the author's knee-jerk reaction over the word triggering and the notion of trigger warnings makes that whole class scene seem both simplistic and inaccurate. when someone says "this book is triggering" or "this book should have trigger warnings" they are not saying "this book is bad" or "this book should be banned/censored/cancelled". the author's feelings about this whole thing are quite obvious, yet, the narrator of their novel pretends to puzzle things over, but in way that feels entirely performative and condescending. the icing on the cake is having a student say something along the lines of : "we can't read this book like it's a 19th century exploration of the psyche this book is before a time before anyone was worried about being a girl-boss..." dio mio.
this lazy portrayal of gen-zers and young millennials falls flat for me as a reader. if you're going to mock them, at least do it without broadcasting the fact that you're several generations removed from their experiences and have a limited interest in understanding their perspectives. or, elevate said scene with <i>something</i>. but the scenes unfolds in such a predictable way as to make its contents all the more shallow. this was neither a witty nor a keenly-observed depiction of academia. the dialogues are stilted and do not ring true to life and the storytelling is uninspired.

even if the contents of the novel had not annoyed me, i would have felt little interest in continuing this book. the writing is awkward and the pacing is off. we have this opening scene that feels all over the place, despite doing very little.

if this novel is on your radar i encourage you to look up more positive reviews. my thoughts are based only on a small portion of a book, so it may very well be that the novel is not what i made it out to be.

“The Tree Doctor” by Marie Mutsuki Mockett and narrated by June Angela is set in the Carmel Valley in Northern California at the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic. The unnamed narrator had left her family in Hong Kong where they had been living to return to California to make arrangements for her aging mother who must go into a nursing home. Unable to return to her family after the pandemic shut down the world, the narrator is stranded in her mother’s home. She fills her days with teaching her class on The Tale of Genji via zoom to her students in Hong Kong, taking care of her mother’s garden, and reflecting on the cycle of life. When one of the precious trees in her mother’s garden looks like it may die, she goes to the local nursery. There, she meets the “Tree Doctor,” whom she is strongly attracted to.

I really enjoyed this novel, particularly the ongoing discussion of "The Tale of Genji" with the narrator’s students. How I wished I could have been a member of that class when I, too, read it for the first time at the beginning of the pandemic. Many readers may not have read the world’s first novel, but it is easy to google enough information to be able to follow the thread of the story.

The novel contains eroticism, but I would not call this an erotic novel. It was more of a woman’s quest to rediscover herself and to learn what is important in life.

I've been a fan of Marie Mutsuki Mockett since I read her memoir "American Harvest: God, Country and Farming in the Heartlands," and I enjoyed this work of fiction. I will be checking out her other novels as well!

Thank you very much to Negalley, the author, and the narrator for an ALC of this wonderful novel. My opinions are my own.

The Tree Doctor written by Marie Mutsuki Mockett and narrated by June Angela is an incredible piece of literature and an exceptional observation and reflection of human nature when faced with the mortality of others and the self

The first thing that is really striking in this audiobbok is the anonymity of the main character and this in turn is a powerful literary tool which I believe is why there was extensive observation and reflection of human coping mechanisms, from distraction, to acceptance, through physical sensation and self exploration and many more.


The main character is isolated from their immediate family, caring for an ailing, elderly Mother and trying to ground herself while teaching remotely during the outset of the pandemic (this will resonate on so many levels with so many of us). The novel is a space in time and one persons deepest experiences throughout and had me captivated

There is a certain level of eroticism but this is contextual and does not dominate the narrative.

June Angela is an incredible narrator and I was utterly immersed in this audiobook. Marie Mutsuki Mockett writes with intelligent reflection, yet exceptional empathy and insight.

Thank you very much to Negalley, Dreamscape, the author Marie Mutsuki Mockett and narrator June Angela for this outstanding ALC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own