The Language of Flowers

The Language of Flowers – Vanessa Diffenbaugh

After a childhood full of unsuccessful foster placements, Victoria ages out of the foster care system to become emancipated, unemployed, and homeless. She lacks job skills, experience, and even a resume, but she does know the language of flowers. One of her foster mothers taught her that each flower conveys a specific message, giving Victoria a secret language with which to communicate when words don’t work. Through a chance encounter, Victoria earns a job as an assistant at a small flower shop, arranging bouquets and centerpieces full of meaning in addition to aesthetic beauty. Her work with flowers also brings an unexpected connection to her past when she runs into Grant, someone she knew from her last foster placement when she was 10 years old. Grant’s persistent presence dredges up memories full of regret, guilt, and shame about how her foster placement ended, and Victoria struggles to address her troubled past while also learning to trust people in the present. Her new reliance on and responsibility to other people threaten to overwhelm her, and she reverts to her old habit of isolating herself from everyone. Gradually, she learns forgiveness and trust, and starts over yet again with a life that has more stability, more direction, and more hope for the future.

“The Language of Flowers” by Vanessa Diffenbaugh immediately establishes an emotional connection that remains unrelenting throughout the story. Looking objectively at the story, it is easy to feel protective and compassionate for Victoria, considering her life circumstances, but also easy to see how her actions hurt both herself and others. Diffenbaugh’s characters encompass the full range of human emotion and response, and all her characters are continuously loveable and relatable despite that. Or perhaps because of that. Although the plot is somewhat formulaic and the ending is fairly easily surmised from early on in the book, there are so many aspects of the story that make this book unique. With such a strong emphasis on flowers, Diffenbaugh crafts her story with a language beyond words, adding dimension to her characters and enhancing the magic of her novel by perfectly capturing the clumsy inadequacy of words. The story is beautiful – emotionally, aesthetically, and poetically.

I generally love reading books that have been specifically recommended to me for one reason or another, and this book absolutely follows that trend. Although the story was not complex, the characters were, and Victoria’s development throughout the book was amazing and inspiring to follow. I did have some issues with timing (whole days and weeks just magically disappeared, or were repeated!), but that only matters if I’m being really picky about it. The whole concept of the language of flowers was new to me, and I loved learning the meaning of each flower throughout the story (and there’s an appendix in back, so don’t worry if they’re not all defined in the text). Educational, emotionally gripping, and unique – what else could you want from a story?