Reviewed by Kat

TITLE: The Garden

SERIES: Lavender Shores (book #2)

AUTHOR: Rosalind Abel

PUBLISHER: Wings of Ink Publications, LLC

LENGTH: 254 pages

RELEASE DATE: July 25, 2017

BLURB:

Beautiful Gilbert Bryant designs jewelry for the rich and famous, and he made his escape from his gossipy little hometown of Lavender Shores. However, with so many friends and family, he keeps getting pulled back. When he attends his best friend’s engagement party, Gilbert can’t help but sample one of the new men in town. It’s just some innocent—or not so innocent—fun. Nothing that will even cross his mind once he gets back to his everyday life.

Walden Thompson dreamed about living in Lavender Shores since he visited as a child. He finally gets his chance, and he embraces the opportunity to start over, to become someone new. He leaves both hurts and dangerous habits in the past, where they belong. When Gilbert crosses his path, Walden gives in to his baser instincts. He can indulge in the carnal pleasures this once and still be okay.

Their few hours together haunt Gilbert, the two-hundred-mile buffer from home no longer shutting out the past or the sexy man he left behind. Walden is just beginning to recover from the smoldering encounter with Gilbert when they are thrust together once more. This time, neither of them can walk away, no matter how hard they try. But when their pasts crash into each other as surely as the magnetism that pulls them together, walking away may be the only option.

REVIEW:

I have become such a fan of the Lavender Shores series that I actually begged my husband to promise to take me to the area to visit. I know that this town is fictional but the area and other towns mentioned are real and now I need to experience it. I just hope the Lavender fields aren’t real because I am severely allergic…lol!

“The Garden” picks right up from where “The Palisade” left off. Andrew and Joel are engaged and, in true Lavender Shores tradition, there is a huge engagement party. Gilbert, Andrew’s best friend, is forced to return to home for the party. He has some long time issues with the town and, as we learned in the first book, some problems in the past (during high school) with attempted suicide. He is at the local gym working off some pent up energy and spots “That Ass!” He zeros in on the man and is going to make “him mine for the moment”. After a particularly rough one-timer the men accidentally meet at the engagement party a bit later. That is when Gilbert learns that the man is not only his twin sister’s friend but they are colleagues at the local high school. The high school where Walden is the new science teacher. And Gilbert doesn’t have anything to do with teachers! So of course he runs! On a chance meeting, several months later in Lake Tahoe, things are explained and they decide for round two. “The Garden” is the story how both men combat ghosts and hurdles to move on with their lives.

I knew that Gilbert was going to endear himself to me. It was so obvious with the way he cared for his best friend Andrew in the last book. What I wasn’t expecting was how many of the townspeople treated him. He had just been a kid! And I wasn’t expecting to fall head over heals for the shy, geeky Walden and his red framed glasses. His back story ripped at me and made me want to just hug him. I am so thankful that these two found each other.

The only reason that this is a 4.5 hearts instead of 5 was the actual sex scenes. Believe it or not they mad me a bit squeamish and uncomfortable and their “kink” was a little too much for me personally.

I have become a HUGE fan of this new author. She has taken me to a new town, endeared the families of the founding fathers and made me want to move there! I can’t wait for the next book in this series! A must-read series for me!

RATING:

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