Name: The Lemon Grove
ISBN: 9781472212122

Helen Walsh

Each summer, Jenn and her husband Greg return to Deia, on Mallorca's dramatic west coast. This year the arrival of Emma, Jenn's stepdaughter, and her new boyfriend Nathan threatens to upset their equilibrium. Beautiful and reckless, Nathan stirs something unexpected in Jenn. As she is increasingly seduced by Nathan's youth and the promise of passion, the line between desire and obsession begins to blur. What follows is a highly-charged liaison that puts lives and relationships in jeopardy. For Jenn, after this summer, nothing can ever be the same.

The Lemon Grove

Georgia Carr

This started really well; the set-up was interesting, the characters seemed mysterious, the setting was easily imaginable. However, very quickly, I became bored and tired of the repetitive nature of the plot and the weaknesses of the characters. 

I've read lots of reviews for books that talk about the minor characters being underdeveloped and I usually think to myself, "what? The minor characters are minor for a reason!" But in this novel, it seemed that all the characters were minor because the two most important ones had little to no backstory and seemed very flat at times. 

Having said that, I did enjoy the writing style and the plot was fascinating. There was a lot of strategic vagueness used to emphasize the tension between the characters which I thought was very clever. In no way is this a bad book, but it's not great. It's a quick read and I think it would be perfect for beach holidays. 

Also, five thousand stars to the last page. What a way to the end the story.

Set on the rugged, mountainous west coast of Mallorca, this taut, sultry, brilliantly paced novel is an urgent meditation on female desire, the vicissitudes of marriage and the allure of youth. Taking place over the course of one week, The Lemon Grove lands in the heat of Deia, a village on an island off the southeast coast of Spain. Jenn and Greg are on their annual holiday to enjoy languorous, close afternoons by the pool, and relaxed dinners overlooking the rocks. But the equilibrium is upset by the arrival of their teenage daughter, Emma, and her boyfriend, Nathan. Jenn, in her early forties, loves her (older) husband and her (step)daughter and is content with her life, she thinks. But when this beautiful, reckless young man comes into her world, she is caught by a sexual compulsion that she's seldom felt before. As the lines hotly blur between attraction, desire and obsession, Jenn’s world is thrown into tumult--by Nathan's side, she could be young and carefree once again, and at this stage in her life, the promise of youth is every bit as seductive as the promise of passion. Jenn struggles between the conflicting pulls of resistance and release, and the events of the next few days have the potential to put lives in jeopardy as the players carry out their roles in this unstoppably sexy and unputdownable novel from a brilliant observer of the human condition.

The Lemon Grove

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