The Illegal Gardner by Sara Alexi

The Illegal Gardner by Sara Alexi

This title looked interesting when it popped up on Book Bub.  It was cheap so I bought the Kindle version.

From the beginning, the characters and the story made no sense to me.  Juliet, sometimes spelled Juliette, moved to Greece to escape a nasty divorce.  She did translation work.  Because that was her profession, I found it odd that she initially lacked so much knowledge and compassion for a person of a different culture.  Aaman, from Pakistan and illegal, helped her with her garden.  She had no understanding that he had come from a society where women took the back seat often taking offense at his actions or failure to say thank you.
 
The book was filled with repetitive phases, such as "the cockerels were crowing" and typos galore.  I skipped alot of it without missing any part of the story.  Your time will be better spent on something else because for me the cockerels simply crowed one too many times. 

After The Fog by Kathleen Shoop

After The Fog by Kathleen Shoop

After graduating from college, I moved to Pittsburgh for my first job at Gimbel's.  The first time someone asked me for a gum band, I had no idea what they wanted.  When a girlfriend said she needed to redd up the house because company was coming, I was just a clueless.  And the first time I hears the word 'yunz', I thought I'd moved to a foreign country.

After The Fog paints a picture of a steel town on the Monongahela River is western Pennsylvania in post WWII America.  The mills kept the towns alive, without them the people would have nothing.  They wrapped the workers and their families in the dirt, soot and fog sent into the air from the stacks.  The almighty paycheck from the mill kept their noses to the grindstone and their complaints silent.

Rose is a driven community nurse with a secret past.  She believes she has done everything right in keeping her marriage and family together.  When it all falls apart in the great fog, her soul searching begins.

The scenery and setting of this novel took me back to this part of the country I'd left behind years ago.  I breathed in the thick, gritty air.  I heard the rough guttural sounds of their speech. I walked through the crooked streets lined with rundown houses and broken stoops. The characters, Rose, her husband, Henry and her children lacked depth.  Many of Rose's actions didn't seem to fit her.  Her lazy sister-in-law, Sara Clara, appeared in an interesting scene early in the book, never came into the fullness I longed to see from her.  I felt the same about Father Tom.  These were the characters I wanted to see more from and never did.

After The Fog is based on an actual event.  If I had know that from the start I may have viewed this story with more credibility.  Some descriptions of the fog seemed unrealistic to me.  If I'd know they were based on historical descriptions I may have viewed them differently.  After The Fog may have more historical value even though it is a fictional account.  Otherwise, I wouldn't invest time in this story that lacked the depth of character I long for as a reader.