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A review by kaliaddy
Half-Blown Rose by Leesa Cross-Smith
I have mixed feelings, so this is one of those rare times where I am not ready to give this book a rating. It has several features that I tend to dislike in a book. These things can be ok if there is only one or two happening, but the author put it all in here - emails, text messages, a book within a book, playlists, letters and lists. It’s a lot and I dare say too much - less would have been more. Those distract me when I’m reading. I realize that’s a “me” problem and this style may work for some. Oddly, it seemed to work better in the author’s book This Close to Okay (emails and texts are included there as well).
I thought I was going to be reading a singular love story, but instead there are multiple things going on and I found myself less invested in all of it. I didn’t care about her husband. I didn’t care what happened before they even met. I was even less interested in his son and really any of their kids. When “everything” is happening, I find it hard to care about anything. Also pregnancy as a plot point is the lowest on the totem pole for me, and this book has that. I will say when there is prose (and not a list, email, or text message) it is lovely. Having enjoyed the insular feel of This Close to Okay, I think my expectations were misplaced.
***
And my last point - which is totally my own hang up. The main character is expecting her period in the beginning of the book. She even checks for it during a dinner party when she goes to the bathroom. Yet she goes to bed with no feminine products and there’s a blood bath the next morning in her sheets. The male protagonist, who will eventually become her lover, is in the apartment because he slept over on the couch after the dinner party and he sees her in all this disarray with blood dripping.
I couldn’t get over the fact that a grown women who has been having periods her whole adult life - has two grown children - wouldn’t preemptively put a pad on or something. It’s such a dumb thing for me to pick on, but since she proceeds, on the following pages, to go on and on about how horrified she is that he saw her in that state I couldn’t help but say in my head over and over again “you should have put a pad on when you went to bed dummy - you knew it was coming and expected it because you literally just checked for it 6hrs ago!!” It wasn’t like it came on a week early! So, in closing, it wasn’t the period that annoyed me. I was annoyed by the lack of foresight the character displayed and that set the tone for me by page 60 - ok rant over.
I thought I was going to be reading a singular love story, but instead there are multiple things going on and I found myself less invested in all of it. I didn’t care about her husband. I didn’t care what happened before they even met. I was even less interested in his son and really any of their kids. When “everything” is happening, I find it hard to care about anything. Also pregnancy as a plot point is the lowest on the totem pole for me, and this book has that. I will say when there is prose (and not a list, email, or text message) it is lovely. Having enjoyed the insular feel of This Close to Okay, I think my expectations were misplaced.
***
And my last point - which is totally my own hang up. The main character is expecting her period in the beginning of the book. She even checks for it during a dinner party when she goes to the bathroom. Yet she goes to bed with no feminine products and there’s a blood bath the next morning in her sheets. The male protagonist, who will eventually become her lover, is in the apartment because he slept over on the couch after the dinner party and he sees her in all this disarray with blood dripping.
I couldn’t get over the fact that a grown women who has been having periods her whole adult life - has two grown children - wouldn’t preemptively put a pad on or something. It’s such a dumb thing for me to pick on, but since she proceeds, on the following pages, to go on and on about how horrified she is that he saw her in that state I couldn’t help but say in my head over and over again “you should have put a pad on when you went to bed dummy - you knew it was coming and expected it because you literally just checked for it 6hrs ago!!” It wasn’t like it came on a week early! So, in closing, it wasn’t the period that annoyed me. I was annoyed by the lack of foresight the character displayed and that set the tone for me by page 60 - ok rant over.