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The Unfinished Garden

by Barbara Claypole White (Goodreads Author)

4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 · rating details · 13 ratings · 7 reviews

A successful software developer, James has thrown himself into a new goal — to finally conquer the noise in his mind. And he has a plan. He'll confront his darkest fears and build something beautiful...a garden. When he meets Tilly Silverberg, he knows she holds the key — even if she doesn't think so.

After her husband's death, gardening became Tilly's livelihood and her sa...more

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Published October 1st 2012 by Harlequin

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Oct 04, 2012 Katrina rated it 4 of 5 stars

The unfinished garden is a contemporary romance filled with characters that are certainly not flawless, they have issues in life and within.

We are shown well detailed and in-depth insight into the characters, as well as broaching the subject of mental illness and grief.

Tilly lost her husband three years prior and now is now getting on with life the best she knows how and looking after their eight year old son Issac. Tilly is self employed running a nursery and doing what she loves best, bein...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Lauren Murphy rated it 4 of 5 stars

It’s been three years since the death of Tilly’s husband and since then, survival and being a ‘supermum’ to her eight year old son Isaac has been her sole focus. Tilly runs a small garden nursery from home and is happy with how the business is managing with no views to expand or work more closely with her clients.

James is a successful businessman who has retired at age 45 with plans to focus on improving his emotional and psychological health. Essentially he wants to overcome the OCD (obsessive...more It’s been three years since the death of Tilly’s husband and since then, survival and being a ‘supermum’ to her eight year old son Isaac has been her sole focus. Tilly runs a small garden nursery from home and is happy with how the business is managing with no views to expand or work more closely with her clients.

James is a successful businessman who has retired at age 45 with plans to focus on improving his emotional and psychological health. Essentially he wants to overcome the OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) that controls his life. He is not deterred by the deterioration in his functioning since his father’s death because he has a very simple plan. A plan that involves Tilly and her nursery. James has an intense fear of dirt and he hopes Tilly can design a garden around his home to give him the ultimate exposure to his phobia.
The moment James pulls up at Tilly’s home in a flashy car and flawless suit and sees her barefoot in the garden with dirt on her hands he feels a pull towards her. Tilly also feels a subtle connection with him but quickly senses his need for perfection and turns down the garden design job. James is nothing but persistent, because not only could Tilly offer him liberation from his fears of dirt but her honesty and non-judgemental attitude can also offer a foundation of trust and acceptance that he thought he could never achieve in a friendship, let alone a relationship.

James quickly falls for Tilly and she warms to his quiet, dependable nature but isn’t quite ready to allow someone into her life who is as emotionally damaged as herself. So when she receives a call from her mother in England following a fall, she and Isaac hop on a plane and she revels in a return to her childhood home. Hoping her family home would provide her with some security and predictability, Tilly is thrown into an emotional whirlwind when her first love, Sebastian resides nearby and reignites past feelings. Tilly also discovers a medical problem that requires further investigation and forces her to reflect on her own mortality. Her situation is further complicated when James appears in England open to compromise- if Tilly won’t create a garden for him, then she will teach him how to do it himself.
James and Tilly develop quite an emotionally intimate and intellectually stimulating friendship which stirs hidden fears and worries. For James it is the fear of not having Tilly, of losing her or disappointing her. For Tilly, it’s being open to love again when her last love resulted in widowhood.

I really enjoyed the relationship that develops between James and Tilly; it’s believable and characterised by raw emotions and fears. Usually I am quite fussy about how mentally ill characters are portrayed in books, but in The Unfinished Garden, I think the author did a fantastic job in creating a hero who has OCD but is also strong, masculine and attractive. The author’s personal experience of OCD in her son lends to a well-researched and credible profile of a character with OCD. Tilly’s grief and guilt is also well represented and together with James they make very real, very likeable and also flawed characters that lured me in. The only part of the story that I didn’t think was too necessary was the role of Sebastian, I felt like he was just an additional hurdle placed in the path of James and Tilly and in some ways undermined the grief she felt for her husband’s death. But I did like how this was resolved at the end.

The Unfinished Garden is a sweet contemporary romance novel with well fleshed out characters, broaching serious subjects such as mental illness and grief.
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Sep 29, 2012 Juanita Kees rated it 4 of 5 stars

Aah, the imperfect hero, who can resist him? Barbara Claypole White was the first author to introduce an obsessive-compulsive hero into romantic women’s fiction in her debut novel, THE UNFINISHED GARDEN. Harlequin had the good sense and impeccable taste to pick up the ball and run with it...
read the full review here:
http://www.kees2create.com.au/the-oth...

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Oct 03, 2012 Priscille Sibley rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Unfinished Garden is a beautiful story. I don't read romance but the writing here is so textural and the voice is so rich that I fell into it and couldn't put it down. The story and the relationships have substance and it is the characters' enduring faults and strengths that make them so lovable. An absolutely lovely book, a memorable one.

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Jan 04, 2013 Kimberly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Pure reading magic. Beautifully written.

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Sep 28, 2012 Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Time to go unravel my thoughts about this one. I'll be back when I know what I want to say,

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Nov 30, 2012 Isabel Mansfield rated it 5 of 5 stars

Definately a favorite

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About Barbara Claypole White

I write love stories about damaged people.

I grew up rural England, studied women’s and medieval history at York University, and worked in the London fashion industry before falling in love with an American professor I met at JFK Airport. Today, we live in the North Carolina forest with a ridiculously large garden and our award-winning poet son.

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