It’s been quite some time since I posted a book review or anything here. I was having trouble with the website itself, and then I got distracted building another website for my music (which you should definitely check out at tinachenmusic.com). It seems like we’ve finally gotten the kinks worked out here, but I needed a book that made me really want to blog about it to give me the kick in the pants I needed to get over here and write a post.

Enter Tracy Higley’s Nightfall in the Garden of Deep Time, a mouthful of a title and a heartful of a book! And a stunningly beautiful cover too.

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Nightfall in the Garden of Deep Time by Tracy Higley

 

Here’s the synopsis from Amazon:

You’re invited…
to a timeless party in a Secret Garden.
Expect to come back transformed.Kelsey Willoughby doesn’t have time to pursue her dream of writing a novel. Imagination doesn’t pay the bills, and she’s busy saving her beautiful bookshop from online competition, hotel developers, and the sneaking suspicion that nobody reads anymore.Not to mention all those voices telling her she doesn’t have talent.

But then the vacant lot of weeds next door starts to shimmer.

When Kelsey stumbles into a luminous nighttime garden party, larger than the vacant lot that holds it and filled with enigmatic guests, she suspects they hold the key to saving the bookshop, and perhaps even to her own mysterious origins.

But answers aren’t forthcoming, not until Kelsey is willing to confront her past, step into her potential, and push deeper into the unknown edges of the garden, where an unexpected journey takes her into a world of dangerous revelation.

~With evocative prose and a deeply-embedded mystery, the magical realism of Nightfall in the Garden of Deep Time immerses readers in a delicious adventure of creativity and the arts. A must-read for anyone pursuing a creative life.

Mommynificent’s Review

I have to say I was pretty blown away by this book. I couldn’t put it down, despite it being quite long, and finished it late last night, and I feel like I’m still processing it. I will say that since finishing it, I’ve already purchased four paperbacks today to give to others. My list of people I wanted to share this book with just kept growing as I read the book. And I literally just thought of another person I want to give it to as I was typing this. The best way I can think of to describe it is that it is like Narnia for creative people of all kinds – artists, writers, musicians, etc. It has a lot of insight on creative gifts but all in story form. If you, like me, enjoyed Andrew Peterson’s Adorning the Dark, but if you, again like me, learn better from story and allegory, I think you will love this book. I certainly did. This story spoke to me in so many ways, and I highlighted a ridiculous amount of it (68 highlights to be exact), but I loved this story for itself because even though I could guess some parts of what was happening, other things surprised me and I never had a great sense of where the story was going exactly, but in all the best ways. Other stories this book put me in mind of were Katherine Reay’s Dear Mr. Knightley and several others of her books and Chautona Havig’s new Twice Sold Tales for their bookish coming-of-ageness (how’s that for making up a word?) as well as Sharon Hinck’s Sword of Lyric series and her Dancing Realms trilogy for their hauntingly beautiful allegory. If you know me, you know that being compared with those books is high praise indeed. I highly, highly recommend this one!

This is also the kind of book that I desperately want to discuss with someone who has read it. So if you have, or if you do, please, please, PLEASE comment here and tell me what you thought of it. Did it impact you deeply like it did me? I have a sense this might be the kind of book that people either love or feel meh about and have a hard time getting into. It will be interesting to see if that’s the case.