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A review by ramreadsagain
Send Flowers by Emily Buchanan
3.5
Reading this straight after Parable of the Sower, and during a heatwave, was an experience, let me tell you! Climate anxiety is intense.
"Eco-influencer" Fiona's activist boyfriend Ed was killed during a protest, leading her to completely isolate herself and question what she could possibly achieve on her own, gagged by social media contracts that have her selling the latest greenwashed products while being unable to actually take meaningful action. We join her at rock bottom, suffocating in her flat in an extreme heatwave. She's let all her plants die, and her mother has just confiscated her cat under welfare concerns.
There is a slight mismatch in tone between the cover/summary and the actual plot, which is I believe intentional and will hopefully lead to people picking this up who maybe wouldn't if the summary made it clearer what this book is about. For me it works very well as a call to action, though the specific plot of the book did fall a little by the wayside: the pacing struggled a bit, and the "aim" of the plot did not arise until past the halfway point.
Overall well-written though, and I think it did successfuly balance some humour and light-hearted moments with the seriousness of the topic. The book calls out the passive majority and the dangers of cynicism very well too. The author's note was insightful; I didn't know about the Thames flood barrier and we clearly need more attention on it.
Fiona's character didn't work too well for me: she's written in a way that makes it hard to believe she existed at all before the story starts. Considering her background in activism, she seemed unrealistically clueless about the entire thing, presumably as a way to educate the reader. I also did not feel like she particularly cared about her cat. I found it difficult to root for her and was glad when she finally started making decisions for herself. I liked the portrayal of Ed asnot this "perfect" boyfriend. He rang true for me as the kind of man that tends to be in activism spaces - navel-gazing, benefiting from others' work without acknowledging it, and a belief that his way of activism is the only right way to do it. I was glad that he was called out (even if only beyond the grave) and that Fiona was able to recognise that his expectations of her were unrealistic and harmful. He should have stayed in the compost heap tbh
The side characters really did shine for me though and were my favourite part of the book. I liked that the author went out of her way to acknowledge the inequality both within activism and the way that climate change affects communities.
Thank you to the publisher for this advance digital copy via Netgalley.
"Eco-influencer" Fiona's activist boyfriend Ed was killed during a protest, leading her to completely isolate herself and question what she could possibly achieve on her own, gagged by social media contracts that have her selling the latest greenwashed products while being unable to actually take meaningful action. We join her at rock bottom, suffocating in her flat in an extreme heatwave. She's let all her plants die, and her mother has just confiscated her cat under welfare concerns.
There is a slight mismatch in tone between the cover/summary and the actual plot, which is I believe intentional and will hopefully lead to people picking this up who maybe wouldn't if the summary made it clearer what this book is about. For me it works very well as a call to action, though the specific plot of the book did fall a little by the wayside: the pacing struggled a bit, and the "aim" of the plot did not arise until past the halfway point.
Overall well-written though, and I think it did successfuly balance some humour and light-hearted moments with the seriousness of the topic. The book calls out the passive majority and the dangers of cynicism very well too. The author's note was insightful; I didn't know about the Thames flood barrier and we clearly need more attention on it.
Fiona's character didn't work too well for me: she's written in a way that makes it hard to believe she existed at all before the story starts. Considering her background in activism, she seemed unrealistically clueless about the entire thing, presumably as a way to educate the reader. I also did not feel like she particularly cared about her cat. I found it difficult to root for her and was glad when she finally started making decisions for herself. I liked the portrayal of Ed as
The side characters really did shine for me though and were my favourite part of the book. I liked that the author went out of her way to acknowledge the inequality both within activism and the way that climate change affects communities.
Thank you to the publisher for this advance digital copy via Netgalley.