Hothouse Flower - A book review

I was asked by TLC book tours to do a book review for the novel "Hothouse Flower" by Margot Berwin.  Since reading when you have kids is often hard to find time for, I was happy to have a good excuse to make time for myself to read a book.  Plus, we've had lots of rain making it the perfect weather to read.

Hothouse Flower is about a thirty-two year old advertising copywriter who lives in New York City named Lila Nova.  Recently divorced she seems to want to avoid anything that needs her such as pets, plants or people.  Lila doesn't get much enjoyment from her career in advertising either other than her friendship with a co worker.  Her life starts to change though when she is convinced to buy a tropical plant by a plant seller at a local green market.  As her plant collection grows so does her interest in the man selling them, she seems to return to the market more out of interest in him than the plants.  At the same time she meets another intriguing man who owns a laundromat.  This is not a regular laundromat though, the floors are carpeted in moss and people come to see the unusual collection of plants hanging throughout it.  Inside there is a secret room which holds the 9 plants of desire.  Armand, the owner, tests Lila with things like having her try to root a finicky fire fern to see if she can handle seeing the rest of the plants.  The story says that if you are in a room with the 9 plants of desire you can have anything you want.  The book then follows her adventures in the Yucatan in finding the 9 plants of desire after they are stolen from the laundromat.
The main character Lila is likable enough, she seems to be searching for something to fulfill her empty life even though she claims to not want any responsibility.  I think a lot of people could probably relate to someone like her.  Another main character, Armand, is full of unusual stories and the meanings behind many of the plants he shows Lila.  I didn't really like the way it felt that most of the male characters used Lila and her emptiness to get what they wanted.
Since my reading time is often broken up into short time periods any book that is easy to get back into after not having read it for a couple of days is a plus.  This novel was definitely that type of book.  There was lots of interesting information about the 9 plants of desire, as well as other tropical plants.  But, I have to admit that because so much of what happens in the book is improbable I'm not sure if how much of the information on the plants is fact or if it's just there for part of the story.  
It's hard for me to fairly review a book that is just not the genre I would normally read.  I enjoy more realistic stories where I feel I'm learning something about a period of time or a place.  This book is more far fetched in it's storyline.  I'm sure this book would be appealing to many other people, in fact I read that it is being made into a movie, it just wasn't quite my style. 

Flyaway - A book review.

Anyone that reads my blog on a regular basis knows that I'm a bird lover. I am fascinated by watching the birds that visit my yard. I've done as many things as I can to attract as many species of birds as possible. So, when I was asked to review the book "Flyaway" by Suzie Gilbert I was very excited to do so. Suzie Gilbert is a wild bird rehabber and since my only bird rehab experience has involved scooping a small bird that flew into a window into a shoebox and then placing it up in a safer spot, I was interested to see what a real rehabber does.


Suzie started off early on being a bird lover. She tells of her childhood experiences with birds and about reading a book that taught her how to actually gain the trust of Chickadees to eat from her hand. Through different life experiences she eventually was led to work in a raptor rehab center where she enjoyed getting to know the birds and watched as many were healed well enough to be released back into the wild.


Eventually Suzie decided to start a bird rehab center in her own yard as a place to help songbirds that needed to spend time in a flight cage to strengthen their wings and practice things like foraging for food. She first decides she will not accept injured birds at all, but as the calls for help come in, she has a hard time saying no to people that need a place to bring injured birds. It's not too long before not only her songbird flight cage begins to fill, but so does her bathroom where she keeps everything from baby ducklings to a heron before she can find the appropriate bird rehabilitation center for them. Being someone who has a hard time saying no when it comes to animals (just ask my husband), it was easy for me to relate to her situation. I enjoyed reading about how her husband and two young children become involved with the birds too. The children took part in naming and caring for nestlings (baby birds too young to leave the nest). The amount of time and work that is required to feed them was exhausting just to read about. At one point she is called to help an injured Peregrine Falcon, an endangered species, whose beak has been split after flying into a window.
Many of her stories telling of how the birds behave with each other are quite funny. One of my favorites was about the turkey vulture and the pigeons who she named Jerry Garcia and the Deadheads. Unfortunately some of the stories have sad endings, birds that died from injuries or would never be released back into the wild again.
In her book she frequently mentions what humans have done to cause the need for so many birds to require being rescued. Everything from pesticides and habitat destruction to flying into windows and domestic cats causing them injury. She has a lot of information on how many birds are injured or killed each year by domestic cats. I found the numbers to be quite shocking. As a former cat owner I had always kept our cats indoors for fear of them being hit by a car or injured by a raccoon or coyote. I had never really thought about the impact they could have had on birds. After witnessing our neighbor cat catching a hummingbird, which thankfully was fast enough to get away, I can understand her reasons even more for encouraging cats to be indoors.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I learned so much about birds and how they are cared for and why wildlife rehabbers are so important. I had no idea how much was involved; time, money and emotions. I highly recommend this book if you are a nature lover or if you just want to learn more about what is involved in rehabilitating wild birds.
If you visit here you can read more about Suzie Gilbert and Flyaway, Inc. her non-profit wild bird rehabilitation center. There is also an interesting video of her releasing a female red-tailed hawk.