Book Club – The Language of Flowers Review

Yay book club! Gosh I have so much to say about The Language of Flowers…but first up, here is the book for next month –

Tell Me Three Things by Julie Buxbaum

I was in the mood for something new, and something YA (young adult). Throughout my reading history I’ve always enjoyed YA novels so I go back to that genre time and time again. I’ve heard good things from previewers and this one was only released a couple of weeks ago. Hint – if you don’t want to buy the kindle edition, call or visit your library and request it. They will usually buy a copy for you and will notify you when it arrives.

Buy it on Kindle                Buy the audiobook

Review – The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I had such mixed feelings about this one. It was a very quick read for me (finished in 2 days) and I love a book that I can’t put down, but I wasn’t emotionally connected. Here are my thoughts –

• I could not relate to Victoria at all.
• I feel like she made so many decisions just to be difficult and contrary.
• Yes she had a terribly sad childhood, but she seemed to make conscious choices as an adult that were clearly unhelpful to a situation.
• All that aside, the story kept me hooked – both story lines. What happened between her and Elizabeth as a child, and what would happen to her as an adult?
• I found it hard to get an image of any of the characters in my head. The author gave very little physical description of anyone. When I read, it’s a bit like watching a movie in my head so without those physical descriptors it takes me a lot of time to get into the story.
• The language of flowers element of the story was really interesting, I’ve not really come across it before.
• It was odd how other characters did not seem to ask much of Victoria. I didn’t feel like her interactions were all that genuine, everyone seemed to let her get away with her crappy behaviour, particularly Renata and Grant.
• I found it weird that Renata had no hard feelings about Victoria starting her own florist business just down the road.
• I would have liked it if Victoria showed some gratitude to Renata…maybe she did in the end by sending her the overflow of business. I feel like she never said thank you.
• Then again maybe that’s just me being judgemental. I would do that – but would everybody? Probably not. In Victoria’s life to date their probably wasn’t much room for politeness and pleasantry – it was survival and self protection.
• The book ended well and I was glad that Victoria felt like she finally had a family.

As I said when I chose this book, I knew nothing about it. Going in with no expectations and no knowledge of the plot of characters was unusual for me. I loved certain elements of the story and the author kept me hooked the whole time. It lacked some emotional connection for me because I found it hard to relate to Victoria or any of the other characters. I didn’t expect a happy ending because of Victoria’s self sabotage throughout the whole book, so I was a bit surprised that it wrapped up so nicely.

Three stars.

What did you think?

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