After a lengthy conversation with the strange man, Alice decides to invite the man into her house. Apart from Alice, author Jewell introduces the readers to another character, Lily Monrose. Lily Monroe is a twenty-one-year-old, who apart from being new to the country is also a newlywed. I give Lisa Jewell a lot of credit, right from the start I felt totally immersed within the garden community. The setting descriptions are beautiful and almost at times unsettling in their real-ness. I found myself feeling like I could totally picture the places these characters were walking. It's a real sense of adventure to be able to immerse yourself in a book like that. The Howes, Mom Adele and Dad Leo are new age, free thinking hipsters. Adele homeschools their girls, Catkin, Fern, and Willow (ages commiserate with Grace and Pip) making the atmosphere of this close knit, insular community, even more claustrophobic.

If children are left unsupervised, with no responsibility, can they grow up to be good people, or do they become what they are around? You live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in Midsummer night: a thirteen-year-old girl is found unconscious in a dark corner of the garden square. What really happened to her? And who is responsible? It almost felt like Jewell spent a fair amount of time throwing out red herrings and creating possible suspects, only to get tired of her own book and decide to just wrap things up and close it.Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realize that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

All across the USA, people are showing up dead. The deaths don't appear to be connected in any way until one particular death occurs and gets the Secretary of Defense's attention. He arranges for a task force to investigate. Piece by piece, Lisa Jewell expertly introduces the various characters. I have read several of her books and her talent for making characters believable and realistic always shines through, as it does here. Adele and Leo, who home school their three girls but don’t really know what they get up to when out of sight. Clare, who is struggling to cope with her new life and leaves her two girls Grace and Pip to their own devices much of the time and the elderly Rhea with her huge rabbit who has lived on the crescent for many years and who knows its history. My favourite character by far was Pip, just 9 years old but so wise and perceptive for her years and her letters to her absent father were just so heartbreakingly sad.Finding all of the Lisa Jewell books is not the easiest task. Believe it or not, many of the books have different names when published in the US vs. the UK. They also have different publication dates. Born in London, she studied an arts foundation course at Barnet College before pursuing Fashion Illustration and Communication at Epsom School of Art & Design. DISCLOSURE: I listened to the audiobook of The Girls (previously titled The Girls in the garden) by Lisa Jewell, narrated by Colleen Prendergast and the author's daughter Amelie Jewell, published by Audible Audio, via Overdrive. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own opinions. When Alice eventually manages to get the police to take her seriously, the information that they give her shakes her to the core. Kirsty and Gray are teenagers who when on their annual vacation meet with a teenage boy, who begins to show interest in Kirsty. That said... the prose was lyrical as usual. The imagery was wonderful. I wish I could live there, but without my neighbors running in and out all the time. I also think the girls should've been 14/15 instead of 12/13, especially given the sexual activity they engaged in. I know what I did when I was 12/13, and while I can understand the point in this story, it would've been stronger if the girls were a bit older -- still underage, but enough that I'd possibly get why the mothers were less focused on monitoring them. Or maybe that's the point; they thought they were too young for things to happen.