....what did I just read?

This story was so short that it had no substance to maintain it. There was nothing to make this story interesting except all the plotholes left throughout it. So many questions.

How did she get her mother's journal? How did she know the path? What is the story behind the whole thing?

I can understand a nice, short story for the audience but don't do something like this and leave out so much that people don't understand or confuse the hell out of them.

This story was a complete miss for me. ( )

It's hard to define what this story is, other than perhaps a journey. Part poetry, part prose, it's a starburst of a woman's life as she travels to seek what her mother did before her. ( )

Fall 2022 (Nov):
~ From the Amazon Original Stories Collection Into Shadow

Yeah. No. This one was such a wash. The lack of any good resolution/climax torpedoed it worst. ( )

We've Got To Get Ourselves Back to the Garden
Review of the Amazon Original Kindle eBook (November 15, 2022), released simultaneously with the Audible Original audiobook.

As hinted in my title quote from the Joni Mitchell song "Woodstock", The Garden is a short story about a daughter following her mother's trail to a supposed mysterious garden in the heart of Brazil. It is a "dreamlike short story told in alternating prose and verse" that follows Lęina and her guide Angelo along the journey. The mother Yuliana had apparently abandoned the daughter in order to pursue this path. I missed understanding how the daughter knew the trail to follow, how did she get the mother's journal? Perhaps I just lost focus. It all ends very abruptly and requires an Unsatisfactory Ending Alert ™.

The Garden is one of seven Amazon Original Kindle eBooks/Audible Audio audiobooks released on November 15, 2022 as part of the Into Shadow Collection of short stories where "Some truths are carefully concealed; others merely forgotten. In this spellbinding collection, seven acclaimed fantasy authors create characters who venture into the depths where others fear to tread. But when forbidden knowledge is the ultimate power, how far can they go before the darkness consumes them?"

Trivia and Links
You can watch for current and past Amazon Original Kindle short stories which are usually paired with their Audible Original narrations at an Amazon page here (link goes to Amazon US, adjust for your own country or region).

I had to LOL, as this story's purported 'poetry' seemed to meet Alice Mair's test for prose as she explained in P.D. James' Devices and Desires, a recent re-read of mine:

"... it is poetry, not prose rearranged on the page.”
“With modern verse, can one tell the difference?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “If it can be read as prose, then it is prose. It’s an infallible test.” - Alice Mair explains her test for prose to her brother Alex.

( )