A Garden in the Rain

A Garden in the Rain, by Lynn Kurland

After her fiance, Bentley Douglas Taylor III, dumps her, then fires her, Madelyn Phillips attempts to salvage what she can from the wreckage of her life by going ahead with her planned trip to Scotland sans Bentley, only to find him twit waiting for her there in a misbegotten attempt to convince her to return to him. While trying to ditch Bentley, Madelyn bumps into Patrick MacLeod, the lethally handsome Scotsman who earlier almost ran her off the road. At that moment, Madelyn intuitively realizes that Patrick is her one true love, but she hesitates to communicate this inexplicable idea to him since she's puzzled by it herself. Even if Madelyn reawakens a long dormant sense of desire in him, Patrick knows telling her the truth about who he really is will destroy any chance of a relationship.

I suppose I should begin by saying that I was not best pleased by this book. I had high expectations, admittedly, since the description was so promising ("Ditched by her fiance!" "Taking her honeymoon trip alone!" "Love at first sight, but retaining at least a minimal sense of rationality!") but it began to fizzle about as soon as Madelyn's ex-fiance stepped onto the scene. His presence in the book is almost a mystery - he is so buffoonish, so cartoonishly old-fashioned evil, that while his presence serves to vex our heroine, her sufferance of him vexes me. True, she doesn't like him, doesn't like to be around him, but her acceptance that he is merely a jerk, and not, say, completely out of his mind insane, is bewildering. And he is insane. His reasons for sticking to her like a burr are so mwa-ha-ha-ha batshit crazy that he clearly wandered out of some gothic romance for impressionable young girls of the 1800s, and has but poor luck in making sufficiently convoluted and apalling schemes which fit the twenty-first century. Nowadays we are all about internet scams and drive-bys, young man.



While Bentley should have been living in the 1800s, Patrick MacLeod, hero of the piece, supposedly was. "Was" being the operative word. Like any good transplant from 1795, Patrick practices swordfighting and mooning about over old battlefields in his spare time. One of the best sequences in the book happens as Patrick and Madelyn first get a good look at each other over Culloden - each is struck by a nameless feeling, natch, and Madelyn, overcome, shouts over to him that they're soulmates. This intentional bit of levity was unfortunately, suceeded by a very dull and lengthy middle section - all about their various encounters, and their various encounters with Bentley (I will be fair - this is where we were introduced to Bentley's magnificently thought-out plot, which mocks, deservedly, any reasonable person for reading so far), wherein Patrick buys her lots of clothes and a new violin, she wonders, does he or doesn't he?, he mourns, I can't!, but then they can, but then they can't, secrets, love, angst, etc., etc., until finally, finally, Madelyn falls into one of those mysterious spots that were so oddly marked for her on a map of the forest. And thus begins our descent into hell.


This whole half of the book was like, whoa. Madelyn (and I hope this won't spoil it too much for you) gets peed on. Peed on. Repeatedly, over a course of about four weeks. Four weeks! As you can tell, I am still overcome by the memory. Four weeks! In a little bitty cage, learning gaelic from a conveniently placed piper. Meanwhile, our erstwhile hero gets to dress up with a sword and beat the shit out of everyone he meets (I exaggerate). There is, apparently, no humilation our dear author will not subject Madelyn too, which just makes me contrarily, no doubt, hate Madelyn all the more. This woman is so beaten down by recent events, that even were I to accept the ridiculous premise, the fact that she has no money, no clothes, no apartment, no passport, nothing of her own, literally, that she is completely dependent (as Blanche Dubois would say) on the kindness of others, would make me cry foul at her romance with Patrick. It doesn't feel like love so much as dependency, and a dependency which is prevented at every turn from becoming anything resembling independency. Madelyn may be the most resiliant person in the world, who has the will and ability to overcome all kinds of obstacles. But we're never given a chance to find out. Her every rescue, from perils both Bentley and otherwise, is performed by Patrick, which makes for a fairly one-sided match. That, I suppose, is my biggest problem with the book. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, and if in the future I feel the need for a time-traveling romance I shall fall back on Outlander, whose heroine has both common sense and a sense of humor.


NB: As a special bonus, I leave you with these words, which the title frequently and amusingly brought to mind:

Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
Cause it took so long to make it
And I'll never have that recipe again!
Oh no!