The Garden of Blue Roses

The Garden of Blue Roses is a story of dysfunction and terror. Milo and Klara’s parents recently died in a car accident. Their father was a famous writer of horror stories. In honor of her parents, and against Milo’s wishes, Klara hires Henri to create a beautiful garden. But Milo is convinced that Henri is not who he says he is and becomes increasingly convinced that he is one of his father’s most famous villains come to life. Milo is having a hard time distinguishing between what is real and what is fiction. He finds more evidence of the dysfunction in his family in his father’s work space. He knows he needs to protect himself and his sister no matter the cost, from things both real and imaginary.

I’m not sure what to make of this story. It feels like more and more these days, horror stories are more just disturbing than actually horrifying. There were definitely terrible things happening in this story, such as incest, child abuse and swindling. But there wasn’t anything particularly scary or that made me feel afraid. Those things just made me feel sad and like I wanted to help. Maybe I misunderstood the purpose of the book.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to someone who actually wants be scared and especially not to those who have experienced those things first-hand, unless you want to feel like in some way a perverted kind of justice was served. If you enjoy stories of broken people continuing to be broken or just generally creepy people, then you might possibly like this book. However, I did not enjoy it. When I want to read a horror story, this book would not even make it onto my list. It’s not horror. I’m not sure how you would even classify this.