BLOOM - Linda Dominique Grosvenor
Sadorian Publications
October 2003
SYNOPSIS: Lily Manchester's husband wooed her with carnations up until the day that he enlisted in the Army and never came back. Eleven years later she has picked up the pieces of her life and is quite content with he flower shop Bloom in Bliss, North Carolina, until an irresistible young deliveryman named Alex James sets his sight on her and stops at nothing to win her heart.
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE: (4+) Dee Stewart
REVIEW:
Eleven years after Lily Manchester’s husband ran off with the Army and ran off with her heart, Lily meets a charismatic young man twelve
years her junior, who won’t take “no” for an answer. Her quiet world in her quaint little flower shop gets turned upside down when her heart
and her ex-husband returns home. Will she jeopardize her good standing in the small town of Bliss, North Carolina, to pursue “something that
has been missing from her life for far too long” or will she take the safe route by taking her ex-husband back?
Grovesnor’s addition to Sadorian’s THE CRADLE ROBBERS SERIES is just as fresh and brilliant as the flowers she describes in BLOOM. This
novella is an intelligent and sweetly written story about the blossoming relationship between an older woman and a younger man.
I love short works of fiction, be it short stories or novellas, because they cut to the chase and tell the story matter-of-factly. In order to
do that successfully, characters must be developed and fleshed out immediately. Plain and simple - you get to know the main character in
detail by the end of the first paragraph or page.
Grosvenor does an excellent job at fleshing out her characters. She makes them real in an instant. In most of the last books I’ve read the
characters have been either too good, too bad, or too crazy. The characters in BLOOM are just right. They are human.
Lily’s character flaws enhances the conflict. Her inability to trust, her fear of self-freedom, her own inadequacies about her age, lends to
the question of this novella. It makes her problem real. Will she allow herself to love Alex James despite her own mess?
Alex is just as real as his love interest. He is young, seductive, jealous, and insecure. Alex is as unsure of himself and his future as Lily
is as unsure about her feelings toward him.
Last weekend I had a discussion with some members of my writing group about making a familiar story your own and I used this book as an
example. It is not a lackluster version of MacMillan’s HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK or another remake of "The Graduate". This
story has its own timeless voice. It is such a clever story that I’ve read it twice in three days. Thus, I give the novella a 4.5 rating.
BLOOM is cute and sweet enough for the purchase price. It is short enough to take on a weekend trip and it is intelligent enough to
stimulate your mind. Kudos.
dee@romanceincolor.com (20th October 2003)