Blue Dahlia

Author: Nora Roberts
Published: October 26, 2004 (Jove)
Category: Romance
Series: In the Garden Trilogy #1
Rating: 7/10

Sorry, it's June, and I'm trying to clean up this backlog of April books I finished, so I'm resorting to a lot of summaries.

Against the backdrop of a house steeped in history and a thriving new gardening business, three women unearth the memories of the past and uncover a dangerous secret—finding in each other the courage to take chances and embrace the future.

Stella has a passion for planning that keeps her from taking too many risks. But when she opens her heart to a new love, she discovers that she will fight to the death to protect what’s hers.

Trying to escape the ghosts of the past, young widow Stella Rothchild, along with her two energetic little boys, has moved back to her roots in southern Tennessee—and into her new life at Harper House and In the Garden nursery. She isn’t intimidated by the house—nor its mistress, local legend Roz Harper. Despite a reputation for being difficult, Roz has been nothing but kind to Stella, offering her a comfortable new place to live and a challenging new job as manager of the flourishing nursery. As Stella settles comfortably into her new life, she finds a nurturing friendship with Roz and with expectant mother Hayley. And she discovers a fierce attraction with ruggedly handsome landscaper Logan Kitridge

But someone isn’t happy about the budding romance…the Harper Bride. As the women dig into the history of Harper House, they discover that grief and rage have kept the Bride’s spirit alive long past her death. And now, she will do anything to destroy the passion that Logan and Stella share...

I'm not crazy about the start of this trilogy. Maybe I've read too many Nora Roberts books with women running away from their former lives. Blue Dahlia was a good read, but definitely nowhere near the best of her work. The ghost? It was a little creepy, but also a little annoying. However, the book does a good job setting up the rest of the trilogy. I hope the ghost story has a better ending than the one in Midnight Bayou.