Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Last Camellia: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Last Camellia: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Last Camellia: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Last Camellia: A Novel

    Written by Sarah Jio

    Narrated by Justine Eyre

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "Terrific...compelling...an intoxicating blend of mystery, history, and romance, this book is hard to put down." -Real Simple

    On the eve of the Second World War, the last surviving specimen of a camellia plant known as the Middlebury Pink lies secreted away on an English country estate. Flora, an amateur American botanist, is contracted by an international ring of flower thieves to infiltrate the household and acquire the coveted bloom. Her search is at once brightened by new love and threatened by her discovery of a series of ghastly crimes.

    More than half a century later, garden designer Addison takes up residence at the manor, now owned by the family of her husband, Rex. The couple's shared passion for mysteries is fueled by the enchanting camellia orchard and an old gardener's notebook. Yet its pages hint at dark acts ingeniously concealed. If the danger that Flora once faced remains very much alive, will Addison share her fate?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMay 31, 2013
    ISBN9781469231228
    Unavailable
    The Last Camellia: A Novel

    More audiobooks from Sarah Jio

    Related to The Last Camellia

    Related audiobooks

    Mystery For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Top 10 Books

      Jun 16, 2023

      Top 10 Books
      1 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reads

      Jun 14, 2022

      Summer Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      Poetry In Poo

      Jun 13, 2021

      Poetry In Poo
      3 min read

    • Article

      Where Time STANDS STILL

      Jul 17, 2019

      Where Time STANDS STILL
      3 min read

    • Article

      More Than Gardening’s “Bad Girl”

      Apr 28, 2023

      Watching Gardeners’ World on TV, my attention was hooked when garden historian Advolly Richmond described “gardening’s bad girl”. An award-winning Edwardian gardener, it’s claimed Ellen Willmott booby-trapped her rarest plants, sabotaged her rivals’

      3 min read

    • Article

      Crikey, What Crocus!

      Feb 5, 2020

      Crikey, What Crocus!
      3 min read

    • Article

      Bloomin’ Rain

      Oct 9, 2022

      Bloomin’ Rain
      3 min read

    • Article

      Sissinghurst Castle

      Jun 2, 2022

      Sissinghurst Castle
      5 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      Salt will not sustain us. The coral petrified itself. Sappho whispered in an empty room. The ponderosa pine grew two meters that year. Only lace survived the fires. The markets were invaded by fireflies. Black amethyst appeared in wine barrels. Scorp

      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters to Wendy

      Jan 11, 2022

      Letters to Wendy
      2 min read

    • Article

      Fantastic Mr Fox

      Feb 26, 2020

      Fantastic Mr Fox
      4 min read

    • Article

      All On Show

      Mar 1, 2022

      All On Show
      2 min read

    • Article

      War On Weeds

      Jun 7, 2022

      I WAS a great admirer of Christopher Lloyd (1921-2006), who gardened at Great Dixter in East Sussex for his entire life. I loved his articles, some of which have been re-published in AG under All our Yesterdays, because they conveyed a wicked sense o

      2 min read

    • Article

      Reading CORNER

      Mar 5, 2023

      Life isn’t a bed of roses for three intriguing women If ever there was a time that we needed stories to escape into, this past summer has been it. And I particularly liked escaping with this novel. Love, glamour, secrets, broken hearts and a beautifu

      3 min read

    • Article

      'Life In The Garden' Lovingly Recalls The Place Of Gardens In An Author's Life

      Jun 14, 2018

      In the beginning, there was a garden. This is true in the Bible, of course; Adam and Eve living in that teeming paradise, repainted and reimagined by artists across centuries. But it was also the case for Claude Monet, who carefully designed his flow

      3 min read

    • Article

      Another DIMENSION

      Jan 25, 2023

      Another DIMENSION
      4 min read

    • Article

      Gardens Immemorial

      Aug 9, 2022

      Gardens Immemorial
      2 min read

    • Article

      'The Comfort Of Crows' Is Fuel To Restore Spirts In Dealing With Ecological Grief

      Oct 25, 2023

      Here the New York Times columnist and author of Late Migrations and Graceland Margaret Renkl brings alive in 52 chapters her love for the animals and plants in her yard and nearby parks in Tennessee.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mary's New Phobia – My Voice

      Dec 13, 2023

      ‘House-hunters, escaping rocketing rents in London, are targeting Wiltshire, as they seek more space for their money, as well as a better work/life balance,’ droned Mary. She was reading aloud from the local rag, but I was absorbed in the study of Be

      3 min read

    • Article

      Ramblers Retreat

      Jun 14, 2023

      IN the village where I grew up, all the cottages grew the same pink rambling rose against their walls. Blowsy, prickly and very sweet scented, my grandmother told me that its name was ‘Albertine’, a Wichurana Rambler introduced in France in 1921, the

      3 min read

    • Article

      My First Dormouse Of The Year

      Aug 17, 2023

      SPONSORED BY SWAROVSKI OPTIK YOU WON’T find a bed of delphiniums blue and geraniums red in my garden, but you will find a dormouse. Walk feather-light with me and I will introduce you to my garden’s rarest residents. Just a few days ago I saw my firs

      4 min read

    • Article

      POTTY For Plants

      Oct 11, 2020

      I was astonished – and a little saddened – to read of the theft of a rare plant from Christchurch’s Botanic Gardens. You may have heard about it too – it was a variegated monstera, one of the world’s most popular houseplants. For the uninitiated, lik

      2 min read

    • Article

      Small Is Beautiful

      Mar 3, 2020

      Small Is Beautiful
      3 min read

    • Article

      True To His Roots

      Mar 26, 2023

      True To His Roots
      5 min read

    • Article

      Fond Of The Frond

      Feb 1, 2024

      Fond Of The Frond
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Close Reading of the Greatest Guest Book in the World

      Mar 1, 2017

      Love Shack. Tool Shed. Cabin of Dreams. Doll House. The Cabinet. The travelers who stay at Castro Cabin, the smallest and most remote guest cottage at Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn, often invent their own names for the nine-by-twenty-foot rustic structure. T

      22 min read

    Reviews for The Last Camellia

    4.5/5

    26 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      The Last Camelia is a story that's hard to put down…and figure out. There's a lot going on at once: a story of a young baker's daughter who only wishes to do right and help her struggling parents. From NYC to England, we follow her as she becomes embroiled in a fire-thieving ring, falls in love, uncovers intrigue, and realizes she must do what's right, no matter the cost to herself.The modern day story is a woman in a similar plight and from NYC to England, we join her and her husband as they tiptoe around each other, each keeping secrets—hers a long bigger than his. Just how long can she hide her past, especially with it hot on her heels in the form of threatening letters, mysterious flowers, obsessive phone calls, and stalking?I couldn't bear to put the book down and often found myself reading until the wee hours of the morning, until my eyelids could stay open no longer. It's well-written and gives us just enough to keep us interesting and yet not so much that we figure out the ending and conclusion asap. I wouldn't call this a love story, but a historical/time slip mystery. Regardless of what one wishes to call it, it's a great read. I could really relate to both heroines, I felt as though I were there within its pages no matter whose POV it was. My only quibble would be I did at times grow confused when the POV first changed, even though they were chapter by chapter.Five stars and I received this on LibraryThing.
    • 5/5
      True rating 4.5Jio has done it yet again. She had written an original, engaging and unputdownable book. With the true talent Jio possesses she weaves a story where past and present collide and secrets long buried are revealed. You will become invested in finding the truth and preserving the past. You may also grow a fondness of Camellias as a result of this fantastic novel. I highly recommend this book!
    • 5/5
      This was a wonderful read, with a mystery I thought I had figured out early on but was pleasantly surprised that I had not. This book reads like an old fashioned mystery and love story my mother, who gave me my love of the book, would have read, loved and then passed on to me.I enjoyed the idea for the story as well, I am a garden dreamer and you have me thinking about plants in general and Camellias in particular which is so sad because on this day where I live we are having yet another snowstorm… in April!I like the story that weaves back and forth in time between Flora and Addison, two women who at first seem not have much in common but, as the story unfolds we come to see they have much that binds them together besides the elusive beauty, The Middlebury Pink Camellia. In 1940’s America It seems a ring of international flower thieves is on the hunt for the Camellia and they find and seduce Flora, an amateur botanist with dreams of making big money so she can help her family’s ailing bakery. Flora is told all she has to do is travel to London and pretend to be a nanny for a wealthy family on the country estate thought to be hiding the prized “Middlebury Pink” and secretly search for it.Once Flora gets to know the new family she realizes she can not betray them by letting the greedy flower thieves steal from this family she has come to love. What follows is a mystery that only Addison in present day New York can solveNewly married garden designer Addison is having problems with a painful past and a dangerous man that has come back to haunt and threaten her new life. Addison decides to take her husband up on his offer of escape to his family’s gorgeous estate in London for a much needed vacation, and in doing so leaving her dreaded past behind. Much to her dismay her past has come with her and as she agonizes over her decision to not share with her husband her past she stumbles upon the long buried secret of the Middlebury Pink Camellia that started so long ago on the once lush and large Camellia orchards on her husbands family estate.Addison & her husband share a love of mysteries so when she comes upon an old garden journal that hints at strange and troubling acts committed long ago on this very estate they dig deeper into the mystery and in doing so Addison finds the strength to confront her past as well as managing to solve an age old crime, a mystery and a love story as well as her own love story all with the help of the beguiling and beautiful “Middlebury Pink”
    • 4/5
      The Last Camillia twists two separate tales, divided by time, together into a one story. There's Flora, who left her home in New York City, on the eve of WWII, to go to England. Though her family believed she was headed to work in horticulture, she was really a pawn for an international flower smuggling ring. Her task was to find the last known specimen of a rare camellia, thought to be in the gardens of a country estate. Posing as the nanny for the children of the household, Flora digs up real dirt, in the form of criminal activities happening on the estate, above and beyond the caper with which she is involved. Add in romance, and mystery, and Flora's story is rather compelling, as she tries her best to unravel the intrigue and not become tainted by evilness.The modern day thread revolves around Addison, a successful garden designer, who, frightened by the ghosts from her past, escapes with her husband, to the English country estate his parents recently purchased. Once there, while trying to keep her own history a secret, she begins to try unraveling the mysteries of the manor, and just why locals think the place is trouble.The tales were well told, though a little abrupt/choppy in places. I never particularly warmed to several of the main characters, and at least for Addison, wanted her to talk to her husband directly, to be honest. But then there might not have been a story. Ah well. For a while we had a garden design business, plus living in Charleston, where Camellias are plentiful and adored, I was interested in some of the botanical and horticultural aspects. That one of the main characters was from Charleston was sort of fun, but the references to the city captured none of the flavor. (In fact, one reference, which may be gone in the final edition, since what I read was the ARC) jarred me enough that I lost the train of the story. But I slipped back into the worlds of Flora and Addision and walked with them as they tried to find truth, and keep clear heads and hearts.I will keep my eyes open for more of Jio's work, for even though I wasn't entirely swept away by the novel, the journey I did take was pleasant, and has given me a bouquet of thoughts. And that's a good thing to come away with when reading.Many thanks to LibraryThing Early Reviewer Program and the publisher for sending me this copy of the book.
    • 4/5
      This is the third book by Sarah Jio that I have read. I am really grateful for the chance to read this one. This book follows Flora, an American living in England in the 1940s, and Addison, a garden designer who goes to England to try and escape her dark past.It took me longer than the other books by Sarah Jio that I have read to really get hooked into this one. It just took me a little while to connect with the characters. I really enjoyed that while Flora and Addison's stories were different eventually we get to see just how similar they really are. As far as the mystery as to the events that occurred at Livingston Manor is concerned I felt that at least half of it was easy to figure due to some foreshadowing in chapter nine (I don't want to spoil anything but all I am going to say is it involves a dog). I do have to admit that there were some twists about the events at Livingston Manor that I didn't see coming from a mile away.Overall I really enjoyed this book. It was filled with characters that I really felt for, and it has some masterful twists that had my jaw dropping. I am definitely excited to read more from Sarah Jio.[I received this book from a Librarything Early Reviewers giveaway. That does not affect the content of my review in any way.]
    • 5/5
      An intriguing plot. Didn’t expect everything that happened. Very good story. Would recommend.
    • 4/5
      I loved to story line but the narrators voice was a bit distracting at times. Almost to the point where I stopped listening to the book