Forget-Her-Nots (edition 2010)

Very cute, original plot, and a fun read. Real review coming in a few months time. ( )

Very cute, original plot, and a fun read. Real review coming in a few months time. ( )

Don't be fooled by the simplistic cover - there is a lot going on in Forget-Her-Nots that will keep you turning the pages to see what exactly is going on with Laurel and the flowers. From the jacket summary (different from the synopsis above), I completely did not pick up on the "magical" vibe - I just figured that the flowers were more like the coffee drinks in The Espressologist and the matchmaking went from there. How far from the truth was I!

I'm not sure if enough time was spent on the Laurel's relationships with the other characters. There were brief glimpses, but nothing that I felt really solid. Perhaps that is indicative of Laurel's introverted nature, but the other characters seemed to have more story to them - and it would have been interesting to catch more than a glimpse! Especially Laurel's grandmother.

Forget-Her-Nots would probably be good if you are looking for a cozy read to curl under the blankets with, but not if you're expected a page-turning action-packed magical mayhem. ( )

As the book opens, Laurel is mourning the loss of her mother to cancer. She’s separated herself from her friends, first emotionally and now physically by enrolling at Avondale, and making new friends hasn’t been easy. Though one girl does become a good friend fairly early in the book, she is still very closed off to those around her. This is understandable, but it also made it difficult to feel connected to Laurel.
Other than this newfound ability to seemingly influence those around her using flowers, Laurel has a lot of problems in her life. She thinks her dad is moving on too quickly, bringing home an assortment of women now that she’s at boarding school and out of the way. There’s a guy at Willowlawn, the nearby boys school, that she likes but can’t seem to get it together enough to say or do the right thing when he’s around. And then there’s the mean girl who is jealous of the fact that Laurel made the soccer team and she didn’t, that the boy she likes actually talks to Laurel instead of her, that her friend becomes friends with her – basically anything and everything about Laurel.
Even though Laurel wasn’t the most relatable protagonist, I found myself invested in where her story was going. There’s a lot going on in this book, since Laurel has so many things that she’s working through in her life, so it takes a while to bring that all together into a cohesive story, but it is done well. I found the middle to be lagging a bit; there were times I just wanted to skip ahead and find out what happens, but there wasn’t anything that was superfluous to the story. However, by the end there were a few plot threads that I think were slightly underdeveloped, most notably that focusing on Laurel’s relationship with her dad.
What attracted me to the book in the first place was the premise of Laurel’s ability, and I did enjoy the parts of the story where she was learning about the different messages of flowers. I wasn’t completely sure why she’d agree to help so many girls with flowers for prom when she kept saying that she didn’t want people to know what she could do. I did love the chaos at the prom, though!
I had to wait for a long time to read this book (I think someone at the library must have had a heck of a fine, because I was next on the wait list for about two months for this book), and I’m definitely glad that I finally had the chance to read it. ( )