This could be a very short review: “Author Barbara Claypole White has written a perfect book. Read it.”

Seriously, everything about this story is perfect: the words, the phrases, the emotions, the characters and all the interactions between them. I listened to an audiobook copy and the narration is perfect too. There is conflict and sorrow and grief and hope and of course love.

Tilly’s husband David died a few years ago and gardening is the only thing keeping the guilt she feels at bay, keeping her at least mostly sane and providing a living for her and her 8-year old son, Isaac, in North Carolina. James is successful and rich (and wickedly handsome, I might add) but often suffers from his crippling OCD. He’s had lots of ups and downs in his life, and by this time expects mostly downs. James and Tilly meet by chance. He sees her garden and something clicks. He wants her to make a garden for his new home; she says no.

Then Tilly has to return to her native England for a family emergency and who follows her but James? And I won’t add any more than that, because you really, really, really need to read (or listen) to this story for yourself and let it unfold. I was so engrossed and involved with these characters, sometimes they were maddening, sometimes I just wanted to hug them, sometimes I couldn’t wait for the next chapter and often I didn’t want the current chapter to ever end.

Author White perfectly captures James and his OCD as well as Tilly’s regrets, fears and insecurities. James is brilliant, clever, caring – and worries about every single thing every single minute. He is also single-minded and determined, and right now he is determined to be in Tilly’s life and get that garden. Tilly is attracted to him but scared, and feels pretty much everything in her life is a mess – her business, staying in England or returning to North Carolina, lingering guilt over David, seeing her former schoolmate/lover and wondering what those feeling are, if there are feelings at all.

The Unfinished Garden is funny, both laugh-out-loud funny and full of wry, subtle humor. When Tilly thinks to herself, “James has really wee’d in your bath water” or James thinks to himself, “You’re a troll,” I couldn’t help but laugh. But when they hurt and doubted I couldn’t help but cry and hope for the best. And author Barbara Claypole White does such a fantastic job of keeping the story moving and the plot twisting and turning that two chapters from the end I was still wondering and worrying about how things would work out. And I didn’t ever want to leave these people. (Thanks to the author for providing a copy of The Unfinished Garden. No review was expected. I loved this story and all opinions are my own.) ( )

Tilly and Isaac were quite the team, though I couldn't help but wonder what she was hiding from. I mean, I see she's been through a traumatic experience, and she has her little boy to think of, but there was definitely something else there...a premonition that gets proved more than right later on. As for my initial reaction to James Neely...well, quite honestly I wasn't sure what to make of him. Throwing around money is nice and all, but offering double for a garden from a nursery that doesn't even DO gardens is a bit more than eccentric...not to mention the lengths to which he continued to try to wear Tilly down.

As things progressed both in their relationship (whatever label you wanted to throw at it) and in her personal dramas, I couldn't love the characters anymore than I did. I was so scared for Tilly when everything was coming apart...and adored Isaac and how smart/sweet he is...and James, well he still remained an unknown quantity for the most part, but was endearing nonetheless. Sebastian on the other hand...I was never really keen on, and quite frankly, Tilly's bestie Rowena wasn't really making be a believer of her character either, but then again there was more on both their plates then we were privy to at the moment. By book's end, I was completely in love with everything, longing to know just who she would end up with, and honestly thought it might even be herself for that matter.

All in all, an AMAZING listen/read that I highly recommend to fan's of the Women's Fiction genre. It has loss and love, surprises and revelations, future dreams and realities come true...and it all comes packaged in a fabulous tale that will warm your heart and tantalize the soul.


**copy received for review; opinions are my own ( )

The Unfinished Garden by Barbara Claypole White
ISBN: 9780778314127
Tilly heads back to England with her young son to help with her mom who's had a fall and will be recuperating. It will be the summer and she just loves the combinations of flowers once she sees her hometown again. Her husband, a college professor has been dead for years. Her gardening has always sustained her.
Her house in NC is similar and others want to hire her to make their gardens like hers. James Nealy has OCD and won't take no for an answer and even calls her in England. He gets along with her son, Issac and she's also done some research on OCD as he intrigued her.
Her ex boyfriend is also back at her hometown with his daughter for the summer.
Like the old saying: Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime, TIlly uses this and replaces fish with gardening. It can bring meaning to your life.
A health scare, James shows up and Sebastian's ex wife is pregnant, just what Tilly doesn't need.
Love hearing about not only all the flowers, but birds. I can just imagine that is all you can hear and sweet the sounds, smells and touch is.
TIlly proposes a solution to his problem and he gives her some solutions for her problems.
Love hearing about the trails and other places to just walk and relax.
When the hurricane hits, it's a bit too much for Tilly after she's made up her mind which man she really loves.
An interview about why the book was written and other major aspects are explained. ( )

When I first opened The Unfinished Garden, I thought it would be a predictable story about a widow finding love again. How wrong I was! The novel is much more than a single storyline – it twists multiple lines about family, friendship, grief, health and love – in a pleasing package.

The novel opens on our protagonist Tilly, who is working in her garden/business, Piedmont Perennials. Her friend and colleague suggests she should expand what is an already successful business even further, but Tilly is reluctant. After losing her husband unexpectedly, she just wants to take things slowly with her son Isaac. Of course, life never works that way and enter handsome stranger, James. James wants Tilly to design a garden for him, but Tilly refuses repeatedly, as she’s not a landscaper. Meanwhile, in Tilly’s native England, her mother suffers an injury and Tilly flies home to be with her.

Tilly’s idyllic English countryside escape is not to be. Her ex-lover, Sebastian, has returned home, newly single and something is up with her best friend Rowena. Then James appears from America to ask Tilly again about the garden. Tilly finds herself confiding in him more and more as life keeps throwing lemons at her…

I don’t want to spoil the storyline for you, but there is so much more in this book. The characters are realistic, and I truly felt for them as they battled their demons. Claypole White also writes about obsessive-compulsive disorder with a sensitive insight that will change your perception about the disease. On the relationship side, the story is not predictable, but warm and engaging. The romance (not that I think there’s a great deal in this book – I’d class it as general fiction) is not overwhelming. I’d say that this book explores many different types of relationships:

- The awkward one with your ex-lover – is it really over?
- Your best friend – what is she hiding?
- Your mother – it’s difficult to grasp that she gets old too!
- Your dead husband – when can you let go? Should you?
- New friends – the excitement of learning about someone new.
- Your children – how much should they know about difficult topics and when?

The growing friendship between James and Tilly is a marvellous dance to watch – two steps forward and one step back. I really enjoyed reading when they were able to use their personal strengths (e.g. Tilly encouraging James to get his hands dirty) to help each other to grow and seal their friendship.

This was a really pleasant and thoughtful book to read – the plot was engaging, the characters realistically flawed and the action moving at just the right pace.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com ( )

Tilly is a widow with a young son named Isaac. In the three years since her beloved husband's unexpected death, she has carved a wholesale nursery business out of the North Carolina forest she calls home. A British ex-pat who moved to the US for her American husband, she used her love of plants and gardening to help her work through her grief at her loss. But she still hasn't managed to work through her overwhelming guilt at invoking David's living will and thereby, in her mind, allowing him to die.

James Nealy is perhaps even more damaged than Tilly. He is a very wealthy software developer who decided to retire and sell his homes to move to North Carolina in order to participate in some trials designed to control or cure his extreme OCD. He's also hatched a plan to overcome it on his own and that plan involves Tilly. James, despite being phobic about dirt, has decided to create a garden and he fully intends to have Tilly design it for him. The fact that she does not design gardens and has turned him down doesn't deter him either. He even follows Tilly to England when she returns there to take care of her mother after an accident.

Being in England complicates things for Tilly. Her old boyfriend Sebastian, the one she loved for so long and with whom she has years of history, is back in the village and available. Her mother wants to sell the home she grew up in. Isaac is afraid Tilly will want to move back to England but he wants to stay in North Carolina, the place that has always been his home. And Tilly's best friend Rowena is around to support and encourage Tilly to be happy through humor and the love of a lifelong friend. Through all of this, James continues to urge her to take his garden design commission. In lieu of this and while she noodles through all the decisions and conflicting emotions swirling through her brain, Tilly tells James that she'll teach him how to design his own garden through bringing a walled garden on Rowena's estate back to life.

As Tilly and James work together, they have many meaningful conversations, sharing things about themselves that they've not shared with anyone else, exposing the very hearts of their damage, their reason for Tilly's guilt and the probable catalysts for James' OCD. They come to know and trust each other as they can no one else and yet they are still confused and reluctant to take a chance on each other. James believes that Tilly can do so much better than someone with his baggage and Tilly isn't sure she's ready to open her heart again. Both of these main characters are well drawn and true to life. James' OCD and the demons that eat at him are carefully and realistically portrayed. Their attraction to each other is very gradual and occasionally hard to understand, especially James' initial determination to pursue Tilly for reasons beyond just the garden commission, and the ultimate resolution in the story between Tilly, James, and Sebastian is too rushed and a little too deus ex machina to be satisfying. The narrative focus flips between Tilly and James so that the reader has the opportunity to live inside each of their heads in turn which helps to humanize them and their particular challenges. And the writing about place, both in North Carolina and in England is very visual and descriptive. This is a nice romantic, women's fiction novel with unusual characters who have some very different hurdles to overcome in order to change their lives and allow themselves happiness again. ( )