The Changeling Garden

Rating:
Summary: I loved the originality of REALLY communicating with plants!
Review: As a first novel, I throughly enjoyed this imaginative book. Ms Elze opened a world of conjecture I had never contemplated and fleshed it out wonderfully. The main characters are well developed and should be used in future novels. They could grow along with Ms Elze's skills. I would love to read more of her work.

Rating:
Summary: I loved the originality of REALLY communicating with plants!
Review: At first, I was hesitant to read this book. I thought the plot sounded stupid. Out of boredom I finally read it and I thought it was great! Some scenes could have been more developed and scarier and there was absolutely no suspence as to who the murderer was. I kept reading because it was very entertaining and I think it is one of those books where you can't think about too much and try to make sense of it. I loved the idea of a talking garden. I would reccomend this book to anyone who wants an entertaining, easy to read story.

Rating:
Summary: The worst book I ever kept reading
Review: I did actually read this whole book...mainly because the concept was new and different, it's just too bad that the story strayed so far from...well, from anything remotely believable, plausible, or entertaining. Or maybe it just sucked me in the same way the garden sucked Annie and David in...I'm not sure.

This book was so bizarre - I'm still not sure if it was a horror, or fantasy, or comedy, or what. The characters were completely unbelievable. For example, Annie had a complete willingness to accept whatever it was that was happening to her without much question, and David was the most mature five-year-old I've ever encountered. The ending was completely anticlimactic and the thinly veiled ecological statement the book tried to make was totally contrived.

If you want a book on ecology, there's plenty of good ones out there, not this. If you want a horror, stick to King or Barker. If you want a comedy, go with Evanovich or a stand-up. In short, unless you have a lot of time on your hands and money to burn, I wouldn't reccomend this one.

Rating:
Summary: A Fizzle!
Review: I had bought this book in the hopes that I would be getting a real hair-raiser! Alas, what I ended up getting was a dud. The story starts out promising enough, but then it goes off on a tangent-bringing the story to an unexpected direction that seems to have nothing to do with its beginning! There were other aspects to the story which had promise, but they were ultimitely abandoned with absolutely no explaination! Truly a dissapointment! The CHANGELING GARDEN was in bad need of fertilizer, for it simply did'nt bloom for this reader!