The Little Shop Of Hopes And Dreams

by Fiona Harper

[Leah]

After finishing up K.A Tucker's fabulous new novel Burying Water, I had no idea what to read next. None at all. How do you pick something else to read after such an awesome book? I didn't know how, so I plumped for one of the October books I need to read and review, and I picked the one with the prettiest cover. The Little Shop of Hopes & Dreams has the prettiest book cover I think I've ever seen - it's gorgeous, and I was intrigued to see if the insides matched up to the outsides. I've never read a book about a proposal planner before and it sounded really interesting, so I couldn't wait to dive in. But, unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed with the novel.

Any book that came after Burying Water was always going to disappoint, and while The Little Shop of Hopes & Dreams had an interesting start - with Nicole and Alex kissing at New Year's, from there (for me) it just went down hill. I liked Nicole and Alex well enough, but I don't agree with what she did. You don't agree to plan a proposal for a guy who you may have feelings for, and you certainly don't pretend to be a journalist when you go scope him out for his proposal, and take him up on his offer of shooting a wedding (to get experience of different weddings jobs, as Nicole is a wedding journalist). You don't go to a second wedding, and a third wedding. The alarm bells were just ringing for me the whole time, saying "wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong". It's hard to believe in a romance when someone is actively destroying another one - whether Saffron & Alex were soulmates was irrelevant, the fact that Nicole was there, flirting with Alex and going to weddings, hardly helped and it annoyed me.

I would also have liked if the novel had focused more on other proposals. We only hear of one other Nicole-planned proposal in the novel, and considering the novel is about a proposal planner, I expected more. But instead the novel was just solely focused on Saffron and Alex's proposal. And Nicole's back-and-forth feelings for Alex, and Nicole's angst about Alex, and it just didn't sit right with me. This was a guy she kissed once, months ago. Much like in Thirteen Weddings by Paige Toon, I just didn't get why they were still hung up on each other (and if that was true - why had Alex started seeing Saffron in the first place?). It just didn't sit right with me. I wanted to enjoy the book, but I just didn't. If it had had less angst and more fun proposal planning, I may have enjoyed it more, but the entire premise was based on something I could hardly wrap my head around, which was a shame. It has such a lovely cover, but the book itself just wasn't my kind of read, although I'm sure it will appeal to others.