The Language of Flowers

    The theme for my book, The Language of Flowers, would be that no matter how hard life gets; it can get better. Some of the hard things that happened to Victoria was that when she was 18 she was kicked out of her Gathering House and become homeless. She ended up sleeping in a park for a few weeks. She would walk around for hours all around San Francisco. When she's walking around one day she ends up finding a job; which gave her money to buy food. This is when everything started getting better for her. She was so good at her job, being a florist, that the business exceeded normal customers. Victoria was then hired full time and had enough money to get off the streets and pay for half the rent in an apartment with a roommate. At Victoria's job she had to go to the flower market. Each day she went she saw Grant, a guy who also knew the language of flowers. After a while of being together Victoria had a baby and left Grant. She thought she couldn't be a good mother to her child because of everything that happened to her when she was younger. So when the baby came she went to grants house and dropped the baby off when he wasn't there. She thought they would both be better off without her. But in the end, she ended up going back to Grant and her daughter, hazel.

    After Victoria went through all the curve balls life through at her and even though she thought she could never be happy after the things that happened to her and everything she did; Victoria finally found a family that she loved and wanted to be with forever.  

The Language of Flowers

     In this book, The Language of Flowers, Victoria was given up to foster care just weeks after she was born. She's been to over thirty-two homes and she doesn't seem to take interest in anything. Victoria has one more change before she gets put into a group home and adoption is out of the question. She's 9 when she comes to live with Elizabeth. Elizabeth live on a grape vineyard in the country. Victoria doesn't like her new home so she does things to make her new possible mother give her back. She acts out at school, hits the bus driver and gets suspended, puts a cactus in Elizabeth's shoe, and ruins bushels of her wine grapes but nothing is working. Elizabeth is determined to keep her. It takes five months for Victoria to finally like Elizabeth. Victoria is then taken out of school and is now home schooled. Her and Elizabeth come up with a daily schedule. Victoria and Elizabeth start to learn everything here is about flowers and their meanings, the language of the flowers. So one day Elizabeth takes Victoria to San Francisco to buy a dress for her tenth birthday and for her court date which is in a couple days. The court requires Elizabeth to keep Victoria a year before the adoption is final. A week or so later Victoria gets up puts her dress on and waits in the kitchen for Elizabeth. When she doesn't come out Victoria goes to her room to get her But Elizabeth doesn't want to get. She says she couldn't be her mother and that it wouldn't be a good family. A few hours later Meredith, Victoria's social worker comes to the house. She's about to take Victoria but Elizabeth decides to keep her. She gets another court date in six months, one that she can't miss.
     Next in the book, it jumps to when she's eighteen. Victoria can't find a place to stay or work and she becomes homeless.

                  This as far as I got in the book.

SSR Book

My book is A Great & Terrible Beauty. The book takes place in 1895 in India. Gemma is out in the market with her mother and servant. Gemma is trying to convince her mother to let her go to London with her grandma. But her mom won't let her go. A man comes up to her mother and whispers something in her ear. After hearing what he has to say she tells Gemma to go home and not come with her to Mrs. Talbot's for tea. Gemma gets mad because she feels like her and her mother are getting further and further apart. So Gemma gets mad at her mom and said she doesn't want her to come back come and she doesn't care if she ever comes back; then Gemma runs away. She gets lost in the streets and asks for directions but after the man sees who she is and the necklace she's wearing, he slams the door in her face. A boy she saw at the market sees her and comes toward her and all of the sudden she gets scared. She starts to have a tingling sensation in her arms and works its way through her body and she falls on the ground. She's pulled into what she thinks is a dream, which is actually a vision. In this vision she sees a man following her mother. The man brings out a knife but something in the dark shadows devours him. Gemma's mother then picks up the knife and stabs herself. Gemma is then brought back to consciousness. The boy that was with her asked if she seen his brother. She doesn't know what he's talking about and runs to get away from him. While she's running she runs by the shop that was in her vision. People are all gather around and when Gemma makes her way through she sees it's her mother laying there, dead.

    A couple questions I have about this book so far is: Who was that old man that came up to Gemma's mother? Was he a friend? Also, why did the old man turn Gemma away when he saw her? Did it have to do with her family? Why did the boy ask Gemma if she saw his brother? Was the man following Gemma's mother trying to get to her or the thing in the shadows? Lastly, why did Gemma's mother kill herself and her last word was her daughters' name?