Sunday, August 21, 2016

The Light of Hidden Flowers by Jennifer Handford

My rating: 1.0

This was a book club read. I wanted to like it but I didn't. In fact, I hated it. The characters were very flat and poorly developed.  The writing was very juvenile with "she said..." "he said..." "They went..." and no creative prose at all. The character describes herself with repeated negative traits and sums it up by saying "If I were a company, I wouldn't buy my stock". If she hates herself so much, how are we supposed to like her? If she hates herself and her life so much, why didn't she change? I could have understood if she was contented with her life and others found it boring but for her to describe herself  without any redeeming qualities seemed bizarre. I don't know why it took her father's letter to make her wake up.  Also, she knew all along that was how her father felt as she said she resented it and wanted his praise - again, why was the letter such a revelation.


If this had been in the hands of a skilled writer, the story line could have had hope but, it felt so stilted and implausible that I finally gave up on it. I have to call out that I was listening to the audio version and I believe a narrator can make or break a book so it is entirely possible that the printed version might be more palatable.

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