Learning "The Language of Flowers"

Victoria spent much of her life in foster care, until Elisabeth. Elisabeth was determined to make this volatile young woman her daughter. Then something happened that ended the relationship, but we don’t know what. Now Victoria is turning 18 and is aging out of the group home she’s been living in.
What do you do when you are alone in the world with nothing to your name, expected to somehow create a life for yourself? Victoria turns to the only thing she knows or cares about—flowers.

Elisabeth taught her the “language of flowers”—the meaning that Victorian lovers assigned to flowers as they used them in covert communication. Victoria uses her knowledge of flowers to find her first job, and she sends messages with flowers even though she knows that no one will get the message. But then someone does.

The Fab 5 read The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, and we couldn’t put it down. We really liked the characters, and the whole flower thing is pretty intriguing. The author has had foster children, and she has some idea of what it takes to love a child who has been hurt and traumatized. She also knows a great deal about the foster care system, something we don’t know enough about. There is some mystery about Victoria’s history, and as a reader I was drawn into the story.

But it did seem to us that perhaps she created a sort of composite character, combining the stories of lots of people, because it seemed difficult to believe that all of Victoria’s history could happen to one child. This did not stop us from appreciating and enjoying the novel.

There was one portion of the story that Nancy felt dragged a bit, regarding a new mother who suffers through a difficult period of nursing a baby. You can refer to my last post to remind yourself that some children truly are slow nursers, and it can feel like forever. So we were not all in agreement on that point.

We were all in agreement on one issue—the story wraps up a little too neatly and quickly. Yet we were all satisfied by it, even though we knew we probably shouldn’t be.