The Alchemy of Flowers is a modern adult reimaging of The Secret Garden, with loose elements of fantasy and mythology. In truth, I was seduced by a cool cover and promises of magical flowers.

While there is a strong sense of whimsy and enchantment, there wasn't really magic in the way I was expecting. The main character had an unexplored ability to speak to flowers, but it's hardly ever used except as a way to give her plot-related answers.

I found this to be very predictable, but the mystery is really more of a catalyst to Eloise's development. I am unfamiliar with issues pertaining to infertility or reproductive health, motherhood, body image and sexuality, all which is a major focus of the story and Eloise's character arc, so I maybe didn't connect in the way another reader will.

The writing felt a flat at times to the point where I was skimming sections here and there in the middle, but I enjoyed the descriptions of the teas and tisanes. I also wasn't completely sold on the romance, something about Raphael came off as lacking.

In essence, this book was not for me despite the pretty writing--I am not the target audience. I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher Harper Muse. Opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley for an early copy of this book.

These opinions are solely my own, and not that of the publisher.

Eloise has literally set her old life on fire. Nevertheless, she picks up the ashes and starts her new life by taking a job at a beautiful and secret garden in Southern France that is owned by a mysterious woman known as La Patronne. La Patronne has rules for those who work in the garden: No gossiping, no one can leave their room during dusk, and no children. At first Eloise is fine with the rules. She is having a wonderful time with her fellow employees in the garden, who she bonds with almost immediately. She enjoys taking care of the flowers who seem to magically "talk" to her, as well as creating "tisanes (herbal beverages used for cures)" to help cure La Patronne .
She is even starting to feel more positive about herself, and she believes the beauty of the garden, as well as her new responsibilities as a kind of sorceress of flowers and plants, are helping her to forget her past. However, one evening she sees three mysterious, cloaked women when she loses track of time, and is caught outside of her room at twilight. Then things begin to get even stranger when she begins to hear giggling, and sees footprints that belong to a child. Who are the mysterious women, and why is no one allowed out at twilight? Is the little girl real or imagined? Eloise begins to investigate.

Spoiler Alert: Eloise makes no secret of the fact that her marriage and her old life imploded because of her struggles with fertility. She lost several babies, and tried, unsuccessfully, to adopt. This is a recurring theme throughout the book. Therefore, anyone who is struggling with something similar may have a hard time reading this book. Regardless, through her new experiences in the garden, Eloise is able to begin to heal from those losses.

If you are someone who is interested in flowers and gardening, there are wonderful descriptions of all of the living things in the garden (even the poison garden). Also, there are vivid descriptions of the meals that Eloise and her new friends share with one another in the garden.

Eloise, grieving and adrift, takes a leap of faith and lands in the secluded gardens of a French estate shrouded in legend and quiet magic. What begins as a quest for solitude and healing soon unfolds into a hauntingly beautiful mystery—where flowers seem to hum with hidden power, dusk hides long-forgotten secrets, and the heart, no matter how fractured, finds a way to grow again.

THE ALCHEMY OF FLOWERS is a contemporary reimagining of the concept of The Secret Garden as a somewhat mystical place of healing—is it magic? Is it a placebo? Is nature that wonderful and wild thing that can heal people in mysterious ways that hard human science cannot? The similarities between this novel and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel end at the paradisiacal garden and the gloomy chateau, and the protagonist’s journey of healing. At its core, THE ALCHEMY OF FLOWERS is Eloise’s own journey of healing from the pains of her past life brought about by her infertility and her intense desire to be a mother, and the festering resentment that the failure to do so created in her. She moves to Paris with little baggage (literal and metaphorical), works in an enchanting garden to make flowers grow out of merde, and forges strong relationships with the other employees of the garden along the way.

I sympathise with both Eloise and the author herself who faced the same challenges, but the execution fell short in a number of places for me. My main gripe, and one of personal taste, was with the almost insta-romance with Raphael that could have turned this into a romcom if not for all the tension, danger, and action about 90% into the story. Another thing that I wasn’t comfortable with was the phrasing of some of Eloise’s intrusive thoughts, one unforgettable example being her reaction to a picture of a woman in a war-torn country: “At least she had the chance to fulfill her biological purpose of life on earth. At least she wasn’t an evolutionary dead end.” Granted, that was just once, but it came across as bio-essentialist to me. The privilege was deafening.

This book is somehow classified as Fantasy, but I think the biggest fantasy in here was moving to another country and meeting your dream man in a dream situation that resolves all the problems you’d been grappling with back home (after many trials and tribulations, of course). The other fantastical elements are more ambiguous, things like: are there really healing properties in the garden, or is it just everyone’s collective imagination building up and maintaining that fantasy? Overall, it was just an okay book—I didn’t love it, and I didn’t dislike it.

While I could not connect with the main female character at the beginning of the novel, I came to like her as she heals. After answering a job advertisement for a gardener, she upends her life to travel the South of France for a job. It seems the garden is magical and has the ability to heal broken people. She meets the three other characters who inhabit the gardens, who open up to her as she does to them. The garden descriptions were magical, and I loved the descriptions of the various houses for each of the four characters. The villain is broken too, but alas the garden has not healed her. I loved how the four characters become attached to one another. She finds love and becomes a step-mother in the end. Who doesn’t like a complicated love story? I recommend this book.

The Alchemy of Flowers wasn’t for me, sadly. I try to stray from my preferred genres to diversify my reads but I was disappointed with this one.

Eloise takes a new job in a magical garden in France to escape her past trauma and is prompted to work through said trauma and also discover that the garden has some secrets as well.

This story could not decide what it wanted to be - waffling between the main characters processing of her trauma, trying to uncover the secrets of the garden, and maintaining new developing relationships. The topics were not interwoven well, rather smashed together quite awkwardly. I could certainly empathize with the main characters struggle of infertility, but I could not connect or relate to her at all.

If you want to read about someone describing flowers, food, and smells for an entire book - this one is for you.

Lastly, using human shit as fertilizer? Is that actually a thing?? The metaphors were not great either.

Thank you HarperCollins and NetGalley for this advanced reader copy.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!
This was indeed captivating—I most enjoyed the atmospheric setting, air of mystery, and the unique magical elements. Also I now just want to go escape to a French estate with gardens!

This book does have the lovely magical realism elements I adore from Sarah Addison Allen but I failed to connect with the main heroine whose “brokenness” is very much tied up in her inability to have children, a fact which has become her whole identity by the time she makes it to a magic garden in France where all her fellow gardeners are also broken and healing in some way. Her romance has a good arc - it’s not instalove which I appreciate. The garden’s owner is also a broken woman but her trauma has been allowed to twist her into the villain of the story which hits its climax in a very dramatic way. There are happy endings at the end of the book but I would have liked a bit more magic I think in the end and perhaps a faster pace to the plot - it lingers in the beginning in a way I almost gave up on the book.

This is an ethereal walk through a garden of healing. Set in a French castle and its exquisite gardens, the magical realism, secrets, and wonder had me seeing and hearing things.

Eloise needs a change after years of trying to start a family and her husband's departure. After seeing an ad in search of a gardener on the grounds of the ancient Jardins du Paradis, she jumps at the chance. THIS is something she can do. And the best part - no children are allowed. Upon arrival, she is already enchanted by the gardens' beauty and wonder. She feels a connection with the statues and flowers and can almost hear them talking to her. But the rules are strange here. Though she makes friends, no one is allowed to leave the premises, especially at dusk. The tea she's drinking has her questioning reality. Maybe the woodsprite flitting through the trees is real. Who is the little girl haunting her? And is the "goddess of the garden" following her with her eyes? Growing suspicious, Eloise decides to follow her instincts and dig deeper into the mysteries surrounding her. But uncovering the truth might mean facing her buried pain.

The setting is the strength of this novel. The sanctuary Laura Resau creates is breathtaking and otherworldly - a perfect place for a broken character to find healing. I somehow found the themes of flowers and infertility connected, as if Resau had planted a seed of symbolism for the reader without saying it directly. The magical realism elements furthered the plot and heightened my imagination, already enchanted by the French gardens and castle. There were a couple of things that snatched me quickly out of the whimsical world of this story:
1. The spice level of this book was surprisingly high and unexpected for a trope like this. I'm not sure it served a purpose at all, and it landed strangely. Icky.
2. The woodsprite character is grandly underdeveloped. It is mentioned several times, described once, and then has very little to do with the dramatic arc.
3. The ending falls flat, along with the climax. It's a bit too maniacal and deranged. It's almost as if the last quarter of the book is a separate story from the first three quarters. Of course, this is just my opinion.

A special thank you to NetGalley, Laura Resau, and Harper Collins Focus for this eARC in exchange for my honest review

This book made my heart ache, bloom, and laugh—often all at once. The author painted such a vivid picture of those gardens that I wanted to just go and live there...lol....It’s a cozy mystery wrapped in floral silk with a side of WTF is going on in those hedges?

If you’re a fan of magic realism, slow healing, and flowers that may or may not whisper your deepest truths back to you, The Alchemy of Flowers is a book worth getting lost in.

Sadly this book wasn’t for me, and I ended up DNFing. I’ve rated it 3 stars because the writing is solid and I’d definitely read the author’s work again, I just couldn’t connect with this one.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This didn’t quite resonate with me but I can see where it may for others. It felt like a fever dream that you remember a whisper of when you’ve just woken up.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I really wanted to like this one! I love the Secret Garden, and well, secret gardens in general. A little magic? A little romance? A little darkness? Cool!

But alas, it just didn't work for me but it's tricky for me to articulate exactly WHY it didn't work. I think it tried to be too many things honestly, which sometimes does work - sometimes I like a little genre fluidity (Happy Pride Month, ya'll!). I think this book would have gelled better had it been more dark with less cutesy comments from the protagonist. I also think the secondary characters were too one-dimensional, and perhaps the book should have been structured as a dual timeline with the history of the secret garden revealed slowly.

2.5 stars for me

I had a really hard time getting into this book. It was pretty slow. I was interested in this book because it's a modern retelling of The Secret Garden with some magical realism, but I am just not interested in anything that is happening and believe it will have some fae in it, which just isn't really my thing. So it's a DNF for me.

Eloise accepts a job at a mysterious garden in France, leaving behind significant pain related to her life in Denver. Finding that she will live and work within the walls of this garden, she rejoices with the newfound friends who live there and feels a growing unease at the rules that must be followed and the magic - both light and dark that seem to be all around within those walls. Storytelling as lush as this paradise garden, readers will want to race through the story to learn what happens and linger over the words and phrases that bring the gardens, the characters, and the story to life.

Desperately needing a change from her life, Eloise impulsively applies for a job across the ocean in France. She’s to be a gardener, at the minimum of the description, taking care of the flowers at the mysterious gardens of Le Chateau du Paradis. There are, however, some very particular rules she must follow to stay in the good graces of her employer - La Patronne. The gates will be locked at all times - if you wish to leave, you must arrange with the manager. You must not be outdoors during dusk. And absolutely no children. Despite the odd rules, Eloise finds comfort in her new life and new friends she makes at the Chateau, but strange and bizarre occurrences have her guessing what she sees and knows.

I’m not quite sure this novel was for me. While it’s advertised as a sort of “Secret Garden for adults”, I feel my expectations in this aspect were not exactly met. Yes, there is a beautiful garden, but the magical elements seemed very clunky and left for (what felt to me) a bizarre integration of what felt like two stories shoved together trying to make one.

I will say, however, ignoring the disjointed stories as a whole, this novel gave beautifully difficult insight on the struggles of infertility and the power that shared stories and experiences have in the healing process.

TW: infertility, miscarriage

Una mujer rota. Una oferta misteriosa. Un jardín mágico en el sur de Francia donde nada es lo que parece.

Eloise ha perdido casi todo: su salud mental, su matrimonio, su carrera y, sobre todo, la esperanza de formar una familia. Tras años de intentos fallidos para ser madre, decide dejar atrás su vida en Estados Unidos y responder a un enigmático anuncio en una revista de jardinería: buscan una jardinera para los antiguos Jardins du Paradis, un lugar aislado y fuera del alcance del mundo… y lo mejor para ella: prohibido el ingreso de niños.

Lo que Eloise encuentra tras los muros del castillo es un jardín exuberante que parece tener vida propia. Las flores le susurran, el entorno la abraza, y la compañía de tres desconocidos —todos con sus propias heridas— le permite comenzar a sanar. Sin embargo, lo que parecía un refugio de ensueño se convierte lentamente en un espacio inquietante: reglas extrañas, presencias invisibles, risas infantiles que no deberían existir, y un velo de secretos que ocultan una verdad oscura.

Inspirada en El jardín secreto pero con un giro adulto y mágico, La alquimia de las flores entrelaza el realismo mágico con el dolor profundo de la infertilidad, la pérdida y el renacimiento emocional.


Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC in exchange for an honest.

Sometimes an author's experiences not being universal are a boon to the story: not so in this case. While I can recognize the inherent meaning and depth of feeling in the novels unexpected and extensive discussing of infertility and child loss, these sections took up an overwhelming amount of the page count. It felt difficult to get a sense for Eloise's character outside of these aspects of her history. This story also had an unfortunate case of side characters being more interesting than the main characters - I ADORED .Mina and Bao but couldn't stand Eloise and Raphael, who felt like a self-insert and a cardboard cut-out respectively. Still, Resau is an enchanting writer and the story's backdrop is drawn in vivid, loving detail. I wanted to badly to live in the garden, even as nefarious details began unspooling around it!

3 1/2 stars. I am not normally a fan of fantasy/magical realism but I decided to just let my brain go with it. I was attracted to the cover and the description. The author has expanded her writing with this novel going from YA to full adult. I can see parts of both. The writing through most of the book is “delicious” and I mean that in two ways. Descriptions are so poetic and sensual. She not only describes the gardens, scenery and flowers. She describes food, drink and romance so beautifully that the reader can see, feel and taste as if you are in paradise, yourself. There is a mystery in the novel but I feel that the hints made it obvious what was going on. At the climax of the story the author made a big change in her writing style. She created a scene of violence that came at me too quickly. Much of this part of the book seemed rushed and less realistic than the fantasy that I had started to enjoy. I fell in love with the characters. They all started out broken but healed through the friendships created with each other. Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review this novel.

I have absolutely no good advice for maintaining a garden, but I can recommend a book that will transport you to Le Château du Paradis, a garden in the South of France enchanting enough to make you forget all the dead flowers in your past.

In Laura Resau’s forthcoming novel The Alchemy of Flowers, thirty-seven-year-old Eloise’s life resembles the bed of strawberries my dogs trampled last year. She’s reeling from years of infertility followed by a recent divorce. When she finds a mysterious ad in a gardening magazine that requests an “impossible task riddle” and “a résumé of ashes,” Eloise decides to abandon her life in Denver and travel to the Gardens of Paradise (45).

Magic and mystery pervade the walled gardens. Mina, Bao, and Raphaël are the only other residents on the estate, which belongs to the never-glimpsed La Patronne and is overseen by the strangely cold Antoinette. La Patronne makes odd requests, such as banning children from the premises and requiring employees to stay indoors at dusk. As Raphaël explains to Eloise, “Until half a century ago, a secretive family owned the estate. . . . There were a series of disappearances and deaths, and then La Patronne took over” (48).

Magic and mystery pervade the walled gardens. Mina, Bao, and Raphaël are the only other residents on the estate, which belongs to the never-glimpsed La Patronne and is overseen by the strangely cold Antoinette. The others tell Eloise to ignore the odd rules and bizarre happenings. At first, the charming setting makes it easy for her to play along, and the meals are as alluring as the scenery. But Eloise has followed the rules for her entire life, and the pursuit has left her unsatisfied. As unsettling occurrences accumulate, Eloise finds herself unable to stick to La Patronne’s expectations. It’s only as she pushes against the rules that she begins to heal herself.

As Eloise discovers, despite societal pressure, a woman never plays only one role: “We would find a way to live in harmony in these gardens. We, of course, meaning the Triple Goddess inside and outside of myself, in all her forms” (235). The Alchemy of Flowers is a book about being open to possibilities and embracing different (often contrary) aspects of yourself.