ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – The Secrets of Flowers by Sally Page

The Secrets of Flowers by Sally Page will be published by Harper Collins on 29th August 2024 in paperback, eBook and audiobook. My thanks to the publishers for the proof copy and to Sally for the beautiful painting of chocolate cosmos.

The painting with its corresponding chapter heading.

I’ve read both of Sally’s previous books – The Keeper of Stories and The Book of Beginnings – and she’s become a favourite auto-read author.

The Lost Bookshop meets The Keeper of Stories in this utterly heart-warming story about friendship, hope and a mystery hidden in the language of flowers…

The smallest treasures can hold the biggest mysteries…

One year after her husband’s death Emma has become a wallflower, hiding among the brighter blooms in the florist where she works.

But when a colleague invites her to a talk on the Titanic, she begins a quest to uncover who arranged the flowers on board.

As Emma discovers the lost story of the girl and the great ship, she realises that flowers may unlock long buried secrets in her own life…

Will she be able to unlock the mystery of the Titanic and heal her heart too?

Escape into the world of Sally Page with the perfect summer read for a weekend away or cosying up in your favourite armchair! From the author of phenomenal bestsellers The Keeper of Stories and The Book of Beginnings comes another novel that will warm your heart.

The Secrets of Flowers is Emma’s story. Her husband died a year ago and she’s, understandably, struggling to cope. She takes a role as a florist in a local garden centre run by Betty and Les, and when Les gives a history talk about the Titanic, Emma finds herself drawn to wondering who arranged the flowers on the ‘unsinkable’ ship. Surely a liner of that size and reputation must have had its own florist.

The story is told alternately in chapters from Emma’s point of view and also that of a young girl named Violet. Emma becomes almost obsessed with finding out more about the flowers on the ship and she can’t put a photograph of a (perhaps) familiar face out of her mind. Violet’s sections are short and I would have quite liked to know more about her, but what there was worked really well and added enough to make Violet an interesting character in her own right, whilst adding to Emma’s research.

This is a beautifully layered story. It’s as much about Emma and how she deals with the traumas in her life as anything else. I loved Betty and Les and how they took Emma under their wing. I also really enjoyed Emma’s research and the wealth of knowledge provided by the interesting characters she meets whilst carrying it out. In addition, the author’s love of flowers shines through and gives a really nice feel to the storyline, especially as each chapter is named after a flower that has some relevance to the chapter’s contents.

The Secrets of Flowers is a really lovely read and it’s constructed incredibly well. It’s contemporary but with a historical thread, it has wonderfully warm characters and I found the plot to be gentle and moving. It’s a delightful tale of loss and grief, friendship and healing, and flowers.

After studying history at university, Sally moved to London to work in advertising. However, in her spare time she studied floristry at night school and eventually opened her own flower shop. She soon came to appreciate that flower shops offer a unique window into people’s stories and eventually she began to photograph and write about this floral life in a series of non-fiction books. Later, she continued her interest in writing when she founded her fountain pen company, Plooms.co.uk

In her debut novel, The Keeper of Stories, Sally combines her love of history and writing with her abiding interest in the stories people have to tell. Sally now lives in Dorset. Her eldest daughter, Alex, is studying to be a doctor and her youngest daughter is the author, Libby Page.