Book Review: The Language of Flowers

By Fatima Azhar

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Book: The Language of Flowers

Author: Vanessa Diffenbaugh

Genre: Fiction/Coming of Age

This is a beautiful book interlaced with information about the meanings of flowers and a full glossary at the end. But the beauty is not in the descriptions of flowers rather in the storyline.

Victoria is a girl who has just turned 18 after being abandoned at birth. She has gone from one foster home to another all her life and has been hurt more than she has been loved. By the time she is able to free herself of the foster system and get out of her orphanage she has become so hard that she let's nothing affect her. To her love is a vulnerability and a privilege which she doesn't want or deserve. The only thing she cares even mildly about is flowers and the language of flowers.

But she wasn't always like this. There had been a time many years ago when she had allowed herself to love (been forced to love more like), when she had almost been adopted by the only woman she had ever dared to consider a mother, the woman who taught her all about flowers and who's vineyards she burnt to the ground.

As the story proceeds, we realize it is set in two different times; the present and the past. As we see the person she is today, we also get to see how she became this person. We learn about her mistrust of the world, about her fear of getting close to people and her obsession with flowers.

It is when the past and the present collide that she must make some difficult choices and step up to embrace her past and present to walk the path to the future.

This is a story about love; about accepting who you are and allowing other people to love you, about loving other people even when they are lost or far away from you. It is also about forgiveness and brings you hope that just because you had a rough start at life, you faced the worst or even were the worst you could still move forward and get better.

Your past doesn't have to define your future.

In addition to the glossary at the end, this book has some very interesting quotes.

Here are five of our favorite quotes from the book:

1. “Your behavior is a choice; it isn’t who you are.”

2. “Do you really think you’re the only human being alive who is unforgivably flawed? Who’s been hurt almost to the point of breaking?”

3. “If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.”

4. "coming up with the right questions was even more important than coming up with the right answers."

5. “You made a mistake. One fucking enormous, stupid mistake. That's all. Now get over it. Buck up and fix it, and if you can't fix it, keep going anyway. It's the only way to live.”

Would you like to read this book?

To read it online click here: http://bookengine.site/go/read.php?id=B008QT1DQ2

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Fatima Azhar