Deiva tells Lily about a curse that was placed on the family and how when the last female in the family dies the creatures contained in the three gardens outside will be free to escape back into a world that has relegated them to fairytales. When they arrive at Nightfall Gardens, Lily meets her Grandmother Deiva, who is dying of a flesh rotting disease. Her brother Silas stows away inside of a trunk so that he can protect her.

He kidnaps her to Nightfall Gardens, the Blackwood ancestral home. The man turns out to be her Uncle Jonquil who she didn’t know existed. One night while performing, Lily Blackwood, 13, spots a man in a wolf-hide cloak with a scar on his cheek watching her. The Amazing Blackwood family travels from town to town playing third-rate theaters and never staying long enough to establish roots. While she deals with malevolent ghosts, murderous dolls and killer insects inside the house, Silas is put to work in the gardens, a hothouse of terror, where one wrong step means death.Īlong the way, they search to unlock the riddle of the curse and to stop the creatures in the gardens before time runs out and the world is destroyed. If she doesn’t, the evil trapped there will be unleashed and bring on a new dark age. Lily must take over as protector of the house and three haunted gardens that hold mythical beasts, fairy-tale nightmares and far worse. The two are kidnapped and transported to Nightfall Gardens, the family’s ancestral home, a place shrouded in fog and ancient mystery, where they meet their dying grandmother and learn of an age-old curse placed on Blackwood females. When a mysterious stranger in a wolf-hide cloak arrives claiming to be their uncle, they discover their parents have been hiding a secret that turns their world upside down. Vain Lily Blackwood and her shy brother Silas wonder if their family will ever settle in one place long enough to lead a normal life. I went about as dark as I could and the kids who have read my books haven’t batted an eye.Īllen Houston – 20 March 2014 The Back Flap I enjoyed letting my imagination run wild and to push the boundaries of what is considered middle-school literature.

Nightfall Gardens by Allen Houston