REVIEW: The Winter Garden (Alexandra Bell)

Book: The Winter Garden

Author: Alexandra Bell

Premise: As a child, Beatrice visited the Winter Garden - a place of wonder and magic. Years later, she decides to search for it again. But when both she and her closest friend, Rosa, receive invitations to compete to create spectacular pleasure gardens - with the prize being one wish from the Winter Garden - she realises she may be closer to finding it than she ever imagined.

This book was full of magic. If you liked the Night Circus, I could see you enjoying this. We have two friends who are both chaffing under Victorian expectations. They're both deeply unhappy and desperate for a wish from the Winter Garden. But then they're pitted against each other in a garden design competition.

The first half of the book sets up the characters, their regrets and shows their situations getting worse. I found this to be slow as there wasn't a clear plot. The second half is the garden competition, which I really enjoyed. It was very magical, with us exploring each of the gardens and seeing each woman add more and more in a bid to win. The descriptions were vivid and I felt like I was exploring the gardens myself. Definitely worth sticking out just to get to this part of the story.