January 25, 2020
The Poison
Garden by Alex Marwood
After dozens
of dead bodies are discovered at the compound of a survivalist cult in a remote
area of Wales, police find one adult and a few children are the only survivors. Romy is the single adult to survive. She is pregnant and hiding her pregnancy
because she fears that the police won’t let her go if they find out. Romy and her two younger siblings are taken
in by their aunt, their only living relative, who grew up in a fundamentalist
religious colony outside London. But as
soon as Romy is away from the prying eyes of authority, she begins searching
for other cult members who were either absent at the time of the
murder/suicide, or left the compound years earlier, and it soon becomes clear that Romy has her own agenda.
Who doesn’t
love a good cult book? This one has
overtones of the Jonestown mass suicides in Guyana in 1978. Unlike Marwood’s previous books, The Poison
Garden isn’t really mystery or a thriller, although there is plenty of
suspense about life within the survivalist cult and as the former cult members
try to assimilate (or not) into their new surroundings. There were a number of errors in the text, so
I hope a good editor went through and corrected the text before publication
(for example, Romy was in the hospital for several weeks after being removed
from the compound – since present day passages are set in 2016, a routine blood test or
physical exam would almost certainly have revealed her pregnancy). A fast and entertaining read.
Many thanks
to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-ARC in return for a review.
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