Reviews with content warning for Rape - Água Fresca Para As Flores

I really liked the main character, Violette. She’s a French woman in her late 40s who works as a cemetery keeper (a job I didn’t know existed), tends her garden, and opens up her house to the grieving. When her past is slowly revealed, I felt a great deal of empathy for her.

The writing is beautiful and evocative - I could clearly imagine the cemetery and Violette’s kitchen.

The book is too long though. The story jumps backwards and forwards in time, and incorporates different side plots that are connected by fate and coincidence to the main one. Every time we left the cemetery to follow the story of another adulterous relationship or the mystery of who was responsible for a tragedy 20 years ago, I just wanted to get back to Violette, her steady strength, and her warm home full of cats and gravediggers.

There are some dark and disturbing themes (see content notes) so I really appreciated the moments of humour

(e.g. when she learns to ride a unicycle in order to pretend to be a ghost and scare away some trespassing teenagers)

and the hopeful ending.

Content notes:

child death, grief, adultery, rape, on page sex, adoption, foster care system, manipulative parents, unhappy and unequal marriage, alcohol abuse, suicidal thoughts

Content Warnings

emiliesreading's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

emhromp's review against another edition

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hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

No review of mine can do justice to how wonderful this book is.
It's a story about loss, it's a multilayered love story, it's a mystery, it's a coming of age story, it's a story about friendship - all in equal measure.

Honestly, this book is brilliant.

Content Warnings

thetainaship's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

bonitazivot's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

Unlike seemingly everyone else here on the Storygraph, I wasn’t in love with this book. I found the pace incredibly slow, the writing style bland and its many storylines just didn’t grasp me… mostly because I had no idea what was going on.

I was confused by the writing style. The first chapter was very poetic and beautiful, I was impressed. Sad to say, though, that it didn’t last. The writing styles seemed to change every so often, almost as if multiple manuscripts had been combined into this book. It was just very inconsistent. I’m willing to ignore the writing style changes as it could be due to the fact I was reading a translation, but it sure was disappointing.

The book is written from multiple different POVs, which can be great if done correctly, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case here. There were SO many POVs, I just couldn’t keep track and got lost many time. Somehow I feel like even the writer herself got a little lost, because in some chapters you’d be informed of the year and person you’d be reading about, in others you were left to guess what was was going on. Some chapters were in first person, others in third. Some in present, others in past tense. Again: very inconsistent.

Now, the storyline itself, I found was all over the place. Even halfway through the book, I wasn’t sure what it was trying to achieve. Are we romanticizing ménage à trois? Are we talking about finding your true love? About having to let go of those you love? With so many POVs to keep track of, it was hard to focus on what really mattered here. And even though the message was sad, the book didn’t manage to make me cry. And I cry at commercials…

Lastly. I must admit that with her writing, Valérie kept my attention. Unfortunately it wasn’t in the way she should have. I was bored, confused. Wanted it to be over. Sad to say I’ll be giving this book 2.5 stars.

Content Warnings

internationalreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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