📖 Book Review ~ The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

 

HQ
16 February 2023

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

Forbidden, passionate and all-encompassing, Margo and Richard’s love affair was the stuff of legend– but, ultimately, doomed.

When Richard walked out, Margo locked herself away, leaving her three daughters, Rachel, Imogen and Sasha, to run wild.

Years later, charismatic Margo entertains lovers and friends in her cottage on the Isle of Wight, refusing to ever speak of Richard and her painful past. But her silence is keeping each of the Garnett girls from finding true happiness.

Rachel is desperate to return to London, but is held hostage by responsibility for Sandcove, their beloved but crumbling family home.

Dreamy Imogen feels the pressure to marry her kind, considerate fiancé, even when life is taking an unexpected turn.

And wild, passionate Sasha, trapped between her fractured family and controlling husband, is weighed down by a secret that could shake the family to its core...

📖My Review...

Right at the heart of the story are strong women who collectively make up The Garnett Girls, three adult sibling sisters who have each been damaged by the events of their upbringing at Sandycove, the idyllic family home on the Isle of Wight. Their mother’s doomed relationship with their alcoholic father has left its mark on each of the girls and as the story unfolds and we get to know more about Rachel, Imogen and Sasha so we understand the destruction nature of witnessing a tremendous love which ultimately destroyed everything.

The story flows seamlessly introducing us to each of the sisters, getting to know more about them as adults and yet glimpsing within the vulnerable children who had been so let down by family secrets and lies. Their mother, Margot, is a force of nature, not always likeable and very often exasperating and yet I was fascinated by her and thoroughly enjoyed getting to know more about her and her ill-fated love affair with the girls’ father, Richard,  and her subsequent attempt to remove him totally from their lives.

The story is beautifully accomplished and almost magical in places, bringing place and people so vividly alive I felt as if I stood in the grounds of Sandycove looking out across the bay. The stultifying nature of living within a close community where everyone seemed to know each others’ business only reiterates the sense of atmosphere and makes the story quite memorable.

The Garnett Girls is that special story I was waiting to read and devoured it in the space of a couple of days. It proved to be both fascinating and thought provoking and is such a wonderfully presented debut by a talented writer who knows how to hold the reader in the palm of her hand.

About the Author

Georgina Moore grew up in London and lives on a houseboat on the River Thames with her partner, two children and Bomber, the Border Terrier. The Garnett Girls is her first novel and is set on the Isle of Wight, where Georgina and her family have a holiday houseboat.

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