Roses in December

Roses in December
Fiona Glass
Torquere Press
ISBN: 1-933389-87-7
Fiction, Romance
Reviewed by Shannon Frost

When Nathanial “Nat” Brook, sergeant in the British Army, becomes the victim of an IRA bombing, not only is his body battered and broken, but his confidence and mind as well. The army ships him off to Partington Towers hospital and convalescent home, and though in the days of its grandeur it had once been a magnificent Victorian manor, to Nat, it’s just one more hospital. Yet it has something that none of the hospitals before had, an extensive garden that is a world of its own, and while it may be overgrown and wild, beneath the rough its beauty and secrets remain. Drawn to its mystery, Nat ventures into the labyrinth of trails and there meets Richie Douglas. With Richie’s touch guiding him back, Nat begins a slow recovery, but the closer to being healed his body becomes, the more his enigmatic lover makes him question his sanity.
As the story progresses, author Glass does an expert job of putting the reader into Nat’s consciousness of a solider having gone through terrible trauma, lifting Nat’s emotions of hurt and frustration, depression and remorse, from the pages with a very realistic feel. Richie is charismatic, and just as Nat wishes to learn more about him, so does the reader. Yet the elusive Richie only appears in few a scenes and it would have been interesting to see a little more of him. However, Richie is intriguing enough to keep the reader turning the pages to see when he’ll appear again. The garden is described in a dizzying array of beautiful detail, letting it span out and become familiar in the reader’s mind. With the mystifying Richie and the sympathetic Nat, strong writing full of precise detail, Roses in December, is a creative romance of love overcoming the greatest of obstacles.