The Garden of Promises and Lies

“The Garden of Promises and Lies,” is the third book in The Found Things Series. It’s a sequel to both “The Little Shop of Found Things,” and “Secrets of the Chocolate House,” by Paula Brackston. This time around the object calling to Xanthe is a wedding dress from the 1800s. Going back to the 1800s is like stepping inside of a Jane Austen novel for her. This time she’s not going alone, Liam is coming along with her. Their mission is to stop Fairfax from his diabolical plans.

Pros

The book has some good ideas. I like the fact that Xanthe now told her mother Flora, and her rebound Liam about her time traveling. The setting in the 1800s is certainly interesting. The writing is very descriptive.

Cons

I know many of you think I love finding things to nitpick. I actually don’t, but I give my honest opinion about what works and what doesn’t work in a story. Unfortunately I don’t think the series knows  where it wants to go at this point. There’s more time traveling, new characters, Fairfax has to be my least favorite villain not because he’s evil but he’s a cartoonish villain hell bent on world domination and using time travel to suit his own needs, even then we don’t know his motivation or why he wants to do it. Spoiler Alert! He also gets killed off. It also seems now Mistress Flyte might not be so trustworthy after all or maybe she is?

Overall

I think it’s time for Paula Brackston to move on from this series. It started off with such great potential with the first book. The second book was decent in some areas but seemed rushed in others. The recent book seems like it doesn’t know where to go and everything is jumbled. I know I’ll probably check out book 4 and any other sequels from the library just to see if the series improves or continues to go downhill. Though I’m hoping book 4 is the last one. I think the series would have benefitted if the villain had a better arc and was around in the first book. I also think Samuel Appblebee’s story shouldn’t have ended. It should have gone the Outlander route with Xanthe and Samuel picking a timeline and staying together. The chemistry between Xanthe and Liam seem rather forced, as if Xanthe is forcing herself to move on from Samuel and rebounding with Liam.