Reviewer: Lori Graham
Title: Always Green - Sequel to Like A Watered Garden
Author: Patti Hill
Publisher: Bethany House
ISBN: 0-7642-2938-9
Release Date: August 2005
Genre/Sub-genre: Inspirational Romance
Year/Setting: Contemporary
Overall rating: 5
Sexual content rating: None/Subtle (very)
Patti's Website:
www.pattihillauthor.com
Mibby Garrett is working every day to hold her home together. Her business, Perennially Yours, has been losing customers left and right due to the continuing drought. Her son, Ky, has let himself be absorbed by his computer and its games. Her dream man, Ben, has fallen in love with another. Her checkbook has fallen on hard times and doesn’t seem to be getting back in the swing of things. What else could possibly not go right?
The good news is that her best friend and mentor, Louise, has triumphed over breast cancer. Losing her would have been too much for Mibby to bear. As the summer roles along with its heat and drought, Louise encourages Mibby to not give up on love or her son or her business. Louise even offers to take over and do some marketing for Mibby, which includes entering her in a contest for garden design. This garden design is right up Mibby’s alley and for the first time in a long time, she finds herself excited for something. She is terrified of the looming deadline but finally finds herself turning to others including God for help to make those commitments. Her long lost mother shows up and helps around the house. Her son pitches in to do work on the landscaping. A friend’s son, who happens to be Mibby’s age, has been the bane of her existence but even now she has to admit that the design couldn’t be completed without him. She begins to wonder if there are more areas of her life in which Larry should be welcomed.
Through the course of working together towards this design commitment many wonderful things happen and new doors are opened.
Patti Hill has outdone herself with this latest work – words like charming, touching, encouraging, affirming, quaint, funny, and poignant come to mind. Always Green, while it may be a sequel, is an incredibly well written story. She takes several characters and shows their human sides. She doesn’t shrink from the painful side of being human but illustrates how pain can be turned into something positive and beautiful. She reminds us through her characters that we aren’t always aware of what another human being is walking or working through in their own life and showing a bit of love always works towards the sunnier side of human nature. While Always Green is a continuation of the first in the series, this new journey will truly stand alone to anyone who would pick it up. The imagery she creates with her use of the diary notations and the descriptive scenes laid out through the characters and places make it easy for the reader to truly become a part of the "garden."
I have to admit I am not a gardener but reading Patti’s books gives me ideas of grandiosity where my own garden is concerned. So many times when reading about the interaction between Mibby and her clients, I would picture my grandmother’s garden from my childhood. I would reflect upon listening to the Bible stories my grandmother would weave, upon the hillside of color she had created outside of the house and the crickets in the fading sunset. I was also reminded that romance isn’t always "TV" perfect and often what we are dreaming of is right in front of us if we will but look.
Thanks for sharing Patti and I look forward to more.
Lori
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