Nora Roberts books are a not-so-guilty pleasure of mine. Sure, she technically writes romance novels, but her books are always so well-researched you feel like you are actually learning something. Blue Dahlia is the first novel in her In the Garden series, and the gardener in me LOVES all the references she weaves into the story.::: In the Garden :::Blue Dahlia is the introduction to the story of three women who all work at a gardening store called (you guessed it) In the Garden. Roz Harper Ashb...

A good romance and beginning of the trilogy. The hero is a bit hard to fall in love with, and the beginning is terribly sad, but the story comes around. Of course, It's Nora Roberts so its well written and the characters are developing perfectly. Stella moves back to Tennessee after losing her husband. She wants to raise her two sons closer to her father. There she lands the perfect job and makes some wonderful friends. But when she moves into the Harper House, she meets the Harper Ghost. Nora...

In Nora Roberts's Blue Dahlia, she introduced to three women who came together to work in a garden nursery in rural Tennessee. First, there's Stella Rothchild, a recent young widow with two young sons have moved back to her hometown to be closer to her family. She met Roz Harper, who owned the Harper House and ran the flowery nursery. She wasn't intimated by her, since she tried to escape the ghosts of the past. As she settled down into her new life, she met expectant young mother Hayley and for...

One review said that next to the ghosty atmosphere and romance, this novel also contains lots of gardening tips. I don't really do flowers or nature. I mean, I like green. As, maybe, a wallpaper. Or pullovers when children wear them. We used to have a green bird, too. Sweet thing. Obnoxiously loud. For f-cks sake, I'm probably the only human being, next to Bree's sex-addicted boyfriend in Desperate Housewives, who killed a cactus. In cold blood. I'm a cruel, evil person and I get crazy obsessed

**2.5 stars**Like the Bride Quartet, this book is more about women running a business and their friendship. Even the ghost was more important than the romance, which was lukewarm and not very exciting. I never got the impression that the hero and heroine even liked each other, so I'm not sure how they fell in love.I'm not that interested in gardens so all the talk about plants bored me to death. If I had liked the main character, maybe I could have enjoyed the book more, but Stella was a control...

2 ½ stars. Not enough story. Not enough plot. Characters were nice people but not compelling enough for a story.My mind kept wandering. A lot of conversation about ordinary things. Characters did not interest or intrigue me. Stella likes to organize and manage things. Logan is creative and artistic with his landscaping but appears disorganized in other things. I wasn’t drawn to the relationship. The sex scenes didn’t do anything for me.The plot surrounding the ghost was not well developed and no...

Nothing really to say except that I love this series. After trying to start the inn series by Nora Roberts, I ended up seeing so many similarities to "In the Garden" that I happily DNFed the first book in the inn series and decided to re-read this one. I love gardening and the outdoors so this series was always fun to me. We have some romance and some characters that I actually enjoyed enough to revisit through three books."Blue Dahlia" is the first book in the series and follows single mother a...

Started off great, even made me cry after the first few chapters. Then the story moved ahead a few years and it went downhill from there. Just slow, touchy-feely fluff in a small southern town. That may appeal to many, but it became boring for me.

I know I’ve read this series before, but it’s one of the few Nora Roberts trilogies that I don’t remember clearly. Which meant that I needed to reread them immediately!This isn’t my favorite Nora series, but it’s still fun and sweet with just enough mystery to add some flavor to the narrative. In the Garden is a nursery business set up by Rosalind Harper on her family estate, and she’s on the hunt for a manager. Stella Rothschild would give her right arm to become that manager. She and her boys

2.5 StarsOverly-descriptive, but got a little interesting near the end.

I liked the author's other series about an Inn, 3 brothers, a bookstore, etc. And now found a new favorite. This was a pretty good start. And liked that the ghost character was introduced from the beginning and is mentioned again as the story gets going.The characters you like and get a hint as to what their story will be in the next book. Plus Logan I think is one of my favorites. While he and Stella bicker and try to get along, he's at least honest but at the same time unsure of some things. A...

I don't actually like romances very much but Nora Roberts has a talent for adding the supernatural into hers which make them great reading for me! This one was actually sufficiently spooky that I did not like to read it in bed at night. So having just finished it in the cold hard light of day I can say that I enjoyed the story, the characters, the haunting and even the romance. The sex scenes reminded me of Eve and Roarke but I guess that is not surprising. Another good book from an amazingly pr...

Stella Rothschild's husband suddenly dies and she is left alone with two young sons. Devastated and afraid, Sarah grieves but eventually turns her attention toward the future. She moves from Michigan to start all over again in Memphis, the place where she was born and her father now lives. There she gets a job as a manager of a nursery/garden shop. She quickly becomes friends with Roz, the enigmatic owner of the shop, her new boss and owner of Harper house where Stella lives as a condition of he...

Another win for Nora Roberts. I loved this story. Stella is a strong single mother looking to get control of her life with her boys after the death of her husband and happen to find a great place to work. Three women become close and find a beautiful friendship but Stella also found herself falling for a handsome man that she thought was going to drive her crazy. He does in a good way and he is so good with the boys too. That's just the beginning and I can't wait to see how the story will contin...