11 Apr Book Review: The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

The Language of Flowers is one of those quietly powerful novels that sneaks up on you. It’s deeply emotional, tender without being sentimental, and driven by a protagonist who’s as frustrating as she is sympathetic. Vanessa Diffenbaugh uses the Victorian-era tradition of flower symbolism as both a literal and emotional language—one that her main character uses to express the feelings she can’t otherwise communicate. It’s a book about trauma, healing, and second chances, and it manages to explore all of that without ever feeling preachy or overly polished.

What’s it about?

The novel centers around Victoria Jones, who has just aged out of the foster care system. At eighteen, she’s technically an adult, but emotionally, she’s very much still in survival mode. Having bounced from home to home her entire life, Victoria is guarded, angry, and more comfortable with isolation than with connection. She’s spent years learning not to trust anyone, and that mistrust now defines her.

Victoria’s one consistent love has always been flowers—not just their beauty, but the meanings behind them. While living with a former foster mother named Elizabeth (one of the few placements that ever felt like home), Victoria learned the intricate language of flowers. In this language, each flower conveys a specific emotion or message: honeysuckle for devotion, thistle for misanthropy, lavender for mistrust, and so on. These meanings become Victoria’s emotional shorthand—her way of navigating a world that never made space for her voice.

After leaving the system, Victoria is homeless and aimless in San Francisco, sleeping in parks and surviving off scraps. But her knowledge of flowers eventually leads her to a job at a small flower shop owned by a woman named Renata. There, she begins to arrange bouquets for customers not just based on aesthetics but based on what they’re trying to say—often before they know what they’re feeling themselves.

As Victoria begins to rebuild a life for herself, her past catches up with her in the form of Grant, a man connected to her time with Elizabeth. Their relationship unfolds in cautious, prickly steps—two people shaped by grief and misunderstanding, trying to trust each other without really knowing how.

Through a dual timeline structure, the novel also slowly reveals what happened with Elizabeth—how a relationship that once held the promise of family fell apart, and how the consequences of that fracture still reverberate in Victoria’s choices. The mystery of why Victoria lost that home, and what role she played in it, adds weight to the present-day storyline.

Motherhood becomes a central theme in the latter half of the book, as Victoria is forced to confront her own capacity to care for someone else. When she becomes a mother herself, the question becomes not just whether she can love, but whether she can let herself be loved in return.

What This Chick Thinks

A prickly protagonist who earns her place

Victoria isn’t an easy character to love at first, and that’s kind of the point. She’s defensive, often selfish, and quick to push people away. But the brilliance of the book is that you come to understand her—not through exposition, but through her actions, her silences, and her choices. Diffenbaugh writes her with compassion and honesty. You’re not asked to excuse her behavior, just to see the hurt beneath it.

The flowers as language, not gimmick

I was worried the flower symbolism would feel like a gimmick or get overused, but it really doesn’t. It’s handled with care, and it adds a layer of emotional resonance without overpowering the plot. The flowers become a kind of quiet therapy—not just for Victoria, but for the people she encounters. It’s a metaphor, yes, but one that’s grounded in real emotional work.

Found family and forgiveness

The most touching parts of the novel are about the families we create when the ones we’re born into fail us. Victoria’s relationships—with Renata, with Grant, and even with her baby—are all messy and incomplete, but they show the slow process of rebuilding trust. It doesn’t happen in sweeping gestures. It happens in small choices, day after day.

The book also treats forgiveness with a kind of realism I appreciated. Nothing is instantly resolved. People hurt each other in ways that can’t always be undone, and sometimes healing means learning to live with those fractures.

Final Thoughts

The Language of Flowers is delicate, thoughtful, and deeply empathetic. It doesn’t offer easy answers, and it doesn’t paint redemption as a straight line. But it does show how beauty, meaning, and connection can bloom even from the most broken places. It’s a quiet book, but it speaks volumes.

Rating: 8.5/10

Try it if you like

• The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman – Another novel about complicated moral choices, motherhood, and the weight of the past.
• White Oleander by Janet Fitch – A more intense and poetic exploration of foster care, abandonment, and self-discovery.
• The Garden of Small Beginnings by Abbi Waxman – A lighter but still emotionally rich story about healing and growth through gardening and unexpected community.