Flowers mean different things to different people. They can be for romance, for weddings, for forgiveness, for birth, for death and everything in between. Each chosen flower has a story and whoever ends up with those flowers has a story to.
Lara owns the florist Blossom & Grow in Dublin. It was not her first choice of career but she has come to it, after reassessing her life after tragedy strikes. Her sensitivity with flowers is astute and she seems to make sub conscious choices for anyone that visits.
But whilst helping others Lara loses something of herself and when another tragedy strikes in her life, she wonders whether it is worth anything at all bringing these flowers into other people’s lives when hers is so damaged and broken.
As each different customer walks through the door of Blossom & Grow, or has some connection with Lara or the other main characters, Ella Griffin weaves a tale like a ribbon around a blossoming bouquet. Everything eventually comes back to Lara and Blossom & Grow, but for a time we are taken through other characters lives and how flowers have helped them.
This is such a sensitively written novel, I was so drawn into the flowers and the way that different ones take us all to different places and evoke different memories, that it simply enhanced a wonderful plot.
At times I felt I was reading a book full of some short stories and some long, perhaps reflecting the length of life certain flowers have when they are cut, but what the author, in my opinion has cleverly done is bring everything together as such just like a bouquet. A really warm, uplifting story and flowery in all the right ways.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for allowing me a copy of this book for review. The Flower Arrangement is out now on kindle.
This is the first Ella Griffin I have read. I knew nothing of the author before I chose this book, I just liked the sound of it. Yet again I have picked an author from Ireland and it seems when I do this, I am guaranteed such a wonderful story that I get swept away with it all.
This is also the second book (I think without checking) that I have read this year which has featured flowers. There appears to be a number of themes coming out of the books I have read so far this year.