The Gardener's Daughter is a welcome addition to the YA genre featuring a kaleidescope of supporting characters fanning out from a central feisty protagonist named Ava. Equal parts drama and mystery, Hitchins creates a tale of a young woman desperate to understand her past and longing to figure out her place in the world.
Ava, the only child of a renowned botanist, has been learning the ropes within her father's greenhouse. She has had her eye on some improvements in the greenhouse gift shop and when he leaves on a trip, she fully expects to be able to bring her plans to fruition. The acting manager, however, assigns Ava to greenhouse duties. In a sulk, she reaches out to her godfather who asks her to find a file that he'd been working on with her father.
Her agreement to find that file starts a chain of events that have consequences she could not have foreseen. The world she has known all her life is turned upside down and she heads out on her own, hoping to find the answers to unsettling questions.
Ava is drawn to where her mother worked as a young woman to find out more about her life. She meets a rag tag bunch of people with various problems of their own and soon discovers that not everything at the camp is on the up and up. And as Ava noses around, she discovers that when you stir up a hornets nest, you often get stung.
Readers will be caught up in Ava's journey to find a place to belong. I highly recommend this book and I'm hoping there will be another installment in Ava's story!
Disclaimer: I received a digital copy of The Gardener's Daughter from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was received.
No comments:
Post a Comment