Review: The Language of Flowers

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I heard about this book on a moms' email list I'm on, and it stayed on my booklist for a while until I found it at our local used bookstore. It was a really well-written and really unique book. It is the story of a young woman who has aged out of the foster care system in California, and begins to work for a florist. She is introduced to "The Language of Flowers," a Victorian system for communicating using different species of flowers.

She grows into being a well-known florist herself, falls in love, and becomes pregnant. And yet, her history haunts her - and is told in flashbacks in alternating chapters. The reader learns of her childhood, various foster homes she was in, and a family that came to love her, but is clearly no longer in her life in the current time.

All in all, a good read and what it might get a little preachy about foster care, and what it might get a little programmatic with flower language, is absolved with the beauty of the story.

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