The Sea Garden

In Lawrenson’s (The Lantern) novel, three separate stories are connected by World War II France. In book one, British landscape designer Ellie Brooke is commissioned to create a memorial garden for the owner of a palatial estate on the tiny French island of Porquerolles in the Mediterranean. Immediately upon arrival, Ellie feels she’s made a mistake. Her client’s ideas for the garden change constantly, and his elderly mother’s temperament fluctuates between unwelcoming and openly hostile. Ellie befriends an enigmatic local historian who seems to know Porquerolles’s secrets, but even he can’t assuage her dread that someone is trying to scare her off the island. Book two follows Marthe, a blind apprentice at a Provence perfume distillery in 1943, who becomes entangled in the French Resistance when she discovers that her employers have been helping Allied fugitives flee France. In book three, Iris Nightingale, a young secretary in 1943 London, takes a clerical job at a government agency that prepares British spies for undercover work. She falls in love with one of her French contacts, endangering not just him but her friends throughout the intelligence office. Lawrenson’s settings are spellbinding and all three stories move along at a languid pace, allowing the reader to absorb the sumptuous historic detail. However, the threads tying the three stories together are too subtle, and a big reveal at the end lands awkwardly as a result. (July)