Review: The Bouquet

Title: The Bouquet

Authors: Janet Lee Barton, Diann Hunt, Sandra Petit, Gail Sattler

Publisher:

Barbour Publishing

Date Published: April 1, 2004

Rating: (2 out of 5)

"The wedding bouquet symbolizes a hope: that love will sail into the life of the person catching it. For four guests at Abby's wedding, though, love is the last thing they're looking for. Isn't ironic, the, that when a whirling ceiling fan disintegrates the carefully crafted nosegay, its pieces fly beyond the crowd of husband-hungry women-and parts end up in the hands of these four hardened observers? See if the bouquet/romance tradition holds true for...

• Felicity, the love-worn florist who's horrified to see newspaper photos of her bouquet going to pieces.
• Konni, the brokenhearted widow who's determined never to let love bloom in her life again.
• Rosie, the caterer whose dreams are crushed flatter than her wedding cake, destroyed by a clumsy groomsman.
• Geoff, who quickly hands his flowers to an admiring little girl-and to her big sister, whose love for him is anything but childish.

Can God use fragmented flowers to plants seed of love in fallow hearts? Can He create a bouquet of love from the chaos in these four lives?"

This book consists of four stories by four different authors that all center around the same incident at a wedding involving a ceiling fan and a bad throw from the bride. All of the stories were very easy reads and go by quickly. They can be read in no particular order so you don't have to feel bad about skipping one.

Plot wise, the stories all lacked originality. They start out meeting the person of their dreams, falling in love, denying it, then coming together for a happy ending (like most other stories involving love). This is fine really but reading it four times in a row can be hard to take. Also, all of the authors basically had the same writing style so that also caused me to start to lose interest quickly too. You really have to be in the mood to read this book. I found myself losing interest quickly but when I was ready I was excited to get back to it.

The redeeming quality was the characters. I found all of the characters, with the exception of Konni from the second story, to be very enjoyable. They all had great personalities and all of the stories switched points of view so you really got to know them all. The characters were the only thing that kept me from putting this book down for good I believe.

Overall, the book lacked originality and was almost too simple but had likable characters to keep you coming back for more.