Tess Gerritsen Fans discussion

This is my personal favorite of the Stand-alone books!! It will be featured as a group read from March 15th - April 15th 2011. Please feel free to join us in reading the book anytime and share your thoughts in this thread.


The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen

isn't Maura Isles in this one? I loved this book, it was very different from her.

She barely features at the beginning and a few other areas. I don't want to say much more in case it's a spoiler.

Right - Maura Isles has a minor role in the book :-) It was like a cameo appearance, but she isn't one of the main characters. Can't wait to re-read this! Are you interested in re-reading Laura or Emily? Think about it okay? Okay. Thanks.

I enjoyed this book too. It is what introduced me to Tess Gerritsen. I loved the flip-flopping between two time periods.

Roxy wrote: "I enjoyed this book too. It is what introduced me to Tess Gerritsen. I loved the flip-flopping between two time periods."

Want to re-read it with us? :-) Think about it.

I likely won't join on the group read as I have a huge pile of TBR books I'm trying to get through. I will definitely join in on her new one, though.

I would but I'm in the middle of one book chain book with the next one already stairing at me waiting its turn AND I have to read a book for my local club. Reading has been a slow go for me lately.

Just downloaded it onto my Kindle and am getting ready to start reading!

That's okay Roxy & Laura - Maybe next time :-)

The Bone Garden is waiting for me at the library :-)

I picked up the Bone Garden at the library yesterday along with Ice Cold. I have started with Ice Cold and it is pretty good so far. I really like Jane and Maura. Have you guys already read this one for a group read? I thought I saw somewhere that you had. I'm just trying to keep up.

We read ICE COLD last Summer when it was a new release, but you are welcome to comment in the ICE COLD thread. The thread might not always show up on the group homepage because only the 5 threads with most recent activity in each folder are shown. Here is a direct link:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2...

Dustin Crazy wrote: "We read ICE COLD last Summer when it was a new release, but you are welcome to comment in the ICE COLD thread. The thread might not always show up on the group homepage because only the 5 threads w..."

OK, so I have finished Ice Cold and posted my thoughts and comments on the respective thread and now I am on to Bone Garden. If this one is anything like the last one I just finished I had better do the laundry first because I didn't take the time to do anything while I was reading Ice Cold. Loved that book!

The Bone Garden is my favourite Tess Gerritsen book, and that's saying something because I really love (almost all) her other books as well =oD . I have been trying to get my friends here in Holland to read it, but no luck so far... =o( It will be good to be able to share my thoughts here.

I am still at the beginning but I am really enjoying this book. I like the way it goes from the past, which I like the best, to the present. It isn't as good as Ice Cold but it is very good. Neither of these books are quite the same as the others that she has written.

I haven't read anything other than the Rizzoli and Isles books. So far I am really enjoying this book. I am about 40% through. I have to agree with Tracy that I am enjoying the past part of it better than the current, but that is because that is where all of the plot is at this point of the book.

I agree with you completely Christina, I felt the exact same way.

I see you are reading "Something About You". It looks interesting. Are you enjoying it?

Eclipse, nice profile pic by the way! What type of brew is that?

That's a good question, it was my husband's beer when we were joining in the Queen's Day (my favourite national holiday here in the Netherlands) festivities. I would have to assume it was a Heineken =oD .

Just finished this book! I liked it every bit as much as any of thenRizzoli and Isles books. I am not so sure of how she tied together the past storyline with the present, but it was an excellent book! I highly recommend!!!

I am about halfway through with this book but I have to say that Ice Cold is still my favorite. Bone Garden is good but it hasn't drawn me in the way Ice Cold did.

Dustin Crazy wrote: "This is my personal favorite of the Stand-alone books!! It will be featured as a group read from March 15th - April 15th 2011. Please feel free to join us in reading the book anytime and share your..."

Hey Dustin Crazy,

While I was reading Bone Garden I was thinking that it was good but didn't understand the hype or how it could be a favorite. It was interesting and I like to read about events from the past weather they are fact or fiction. BUT when I got to the end of the book I CRIED. The last few chapters were heart wrenching.


*********SPOILER***************

Norris dying without knowing the truth about his childhood, who his father was, what happened to his mother, that his friend was really his cousin. Rose, having to live life alone with only fading memories of what was and dreams of what could have been. It was a very good read!

I'm getting near the end. It makes me wonder how much is factual information. Tess always does a lot of research into her novels and I also feel like she puts a lot of herself into the story as well. It's easy to see the connection between the author's medical background and the medical history of the 1800's. It's also easy notice the "romance" aspect of Gerritsen's writing in The Bone Garden. Likewise, Tess put a lot of her studies to use in my personal favorite Rizzoli & Isles novel: The Keepsake. She talked about this on the interview contained on the Audio of Girl Missing.

There was a high mortality rate in women during childbirth for many of the reasons outlined in the novel. Keep in mind that the science world was just starting to formulate the germ theory in the mid 1800's and it would be several decades before it was used with any regularity during surgery.

I'm wondering if the info about O.W.H. and Charles mostly true. I guess I need to look into sometime. I think it's interesting that a medical doctor turned writer wrote about Doctors who also became Poets :-)

Dustin Crazy wrote: "I'm getting near the end. It makes me wonder how much is factual information. Tess always does a lot of research into her novels and I also feel like she puts a lot of herself into the story as wel..."

At the end of The Bone Garden doesn't she tell us what is true?

I only had the audio version and I don't remember an afterword. I'll try to get a copy of the book from the library.

This is also my favourite stand alone book. I really felt I was walking down the old cobble streets! Brilliant book

Helen wrote: "This is also my favourite stand alone book. I really felt I was walking down the old cobble streets! Brilliant book"

:-) You clearly have fine taste in literature.

Dustin Crazy wrote: "Helen wrote: "This is also my favourite stand alone book. I really felt I was walking down the old cobble streets! Brilliant book"

:-) You clearly have fine taste in literature."

:0) Thank you!! I do get a little engrossed in my books which is good, but bad when I start dreaming about being in them!!

Helen wrote: "I do get a little engrossed in my books which is good, but bad when I start dreaming about being in them!!"

Depends on the book and your character role. It could be very bad, in which case I'd call it a nightmare rather than a dream :-)

i think this is my fave of the stand alones too, though some of the past descriptives creeped me THE HELL OUT. but that's just more proof of our author's fabulous talent!!

AUTHOR'S NOTE (Found in the back of the book)

In March 1833, Oliver Wendell Holmes left Boston and sailed to France, where he would spend the next two years completing his medical studies. At the renowned Ecole de Medicine in Paris, young Holmes had access to an unlimited number of anatomical specimens, and he studied under some of the finest medical and scientific minds in the world. He returned to Boston a far more accomplished physician than most of his American peers.

In 1843, at the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, he presented a paper titled "The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever." It would prove to be his greatest contribution to American medicine. It introduced a new practice that now seems obvious, but which, in Holmes's day, was a radical new idea. Countless lives were saved, and miseries avoided, by his simple yet revolutionary suggestion: that physicians should simply wash their hands.
-Tess Gerritsen

Recommended reading on human cadavers (I found it eye-opening):



Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

I read that book and i thought that was really good