Like a Flower in Bloom - A Book Review

Charlotte Withersby has been assisting her botanist father her entire life.  She loves plants and flowers and has little desire for anything else.  She is twenty-two years old and her uncle, The Admiral, decides that she must marry to fulfill her proper roll as a woman - to be a wife and a mother.

Charlotte's father depends on her for everything so Charlotte is certain that he will disregard her uncle's advice and keep things as they are, but when Edward Trimble shows up and is hired by Charlotte's father to replace her as his assistant, Charlotte knows she is going to have to come up with a plan and quick.  She decides that she will pretend to have an interest in marriage and in turn her father will be worried of her marrying the wrong man and change his mind and put an end to the ridiculous plan.  Charlotte soon finds that she is in over her head.  She soon has more suitors than she knows what to do with and the one man that recognizes her intelligence as a botanist is Edward.

I really struggled with this book and was so glad to finally get to the end.  One problem I had is that I really am not fond of books written in the first person narrative.  It's my personal preference, but I just don't like stories written from that point of view.  On top of that I felt the story lacked luster.  In fact it just about bored me to tears.  I love flower and plants, but the details of plants in this book were too much for me.  I also felt like the author's attempt at being funny came across as corny.  

The cover is absolutely beautiful and I really wanted to like this book.  I tried to get past my dislike of the first person narrative, but by chapter nine I new for certain that the book was not going to turn around for me.  I plunged forward and was never more happy to see the end of a book.

***This book was provided to me by Bethany House Publishing in exchange for my honest review.