The Forbidden Garden: A Novel

Sorrel Sparrow leaves her sisters, Patience and Nettie, and the plant nursery they run together to help revitalize an ailing Shakespeare garden in England. Patience is good at making herbal remedies and perfumes, Nettie has a knack for growing vegetables and fruit, and Sorrel knows how to make anything grow in even the harshest conditions.

Graham Kirkwood and his wife, Stella, don’t know what to do with the garden on their country estate. Nothing grows there, and it seems an evil lurks under the fallow soil. An old family curse is brought to light, and Sorrel finds new friendship and love away from home.

I did not read Ellen Herrick’s The Sparrow Sisters before I picked up The Forbidden Garden, but enough of the events in the first book were described that I got an idea of what the first book was about, and I felt attached to the Sparrow sisters and the people Sorrel met in England.

Reading The Forbidden Garden was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Herrick has a true gift for scene-setting. Every moment I spent in Sorrel’s world was cozy and inviting. From the things the characters ate to the descriptions of Graham and Stella’s house, I was drawn in and comforted in a snug literary embrace.