This just didn't work for me - so much information about the plant. It just bogged down the plot, my interest waned. I did not like any of the characters - it just came across as poorly written with little empathy for the characters.

I’ve struggled a little bit with this book and tried to read it a couple of times.
The book was in on this reading, but realistically it was a slog and I didn’t connect with any of the characters or the storyline. It was unique and interesting but not a story for me.

The Forgetting Flower was a unique read. The first I’ve read from this author it’s about the character - Renia racing to figure out the extent of the plant’s powers,. She’s confronted by figures from her past who offer a proposal she can’t outright refuse.

Slowly she descends into a menacing underworld of blackmarket mobsters, navigating threats and fending off abuse to protect the safe peaceful life she’s worked so hard for. Desperate to outwit her enemies, Renia maneuvers carefully, knowing one wrong move will destroy not only the plant, but the lives of her sister and herself.

There were so many things to love about this book: the setting of Paris, a strong female protagonist, and a mysterious plant that allows people to experience amnesia about specific events. Very intriguing! You can tell Hugg did an immense amount of research both on Paris and the main character's Polish background, as well as her extensive background on plants and botany. It's easy to get drawn into the story and there are plenty of high-stress situations with shady bad guys who want to get their hands on this money-making plant. I wish there had been a little less back and forth in time frames because it took me out of the immediacy of the story, but I loved Hugg's writing style and plot development skills. I devoured this one pretty quickly. I'll definitely be checking out more of her work in the future (and not just because she was in my graduate school writing program!)

I am working my way through books I picked up and did not read till the end of last year. This is one such book. The first thing I should mention that the second attempt went much quicker than the first. I was more involved in the chaos unfolding within the pages.
We have our enigmatic lead who is hiding a semi-deadly plant at her workplace, and it is in demand by all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. There are many secrets laid bare and many hurdles to be crossed both in the current timelines and the past that is filtered out in bits and pieces to us. It involves estranged twins, disappointed friends and unhelpful acquaintances, to name a few.
It is here that I had a problem. I was not invested emotionally in the outcome solely because of how the information was provided. I expected more from the angle of the flower itself, which never felt like it panned out. If it had been the side-story of a larger plot, I would have liked reading about the 'forgetting flower', but as the main plot point that's to hold all of it together, it was not big enough. Also, apart from the crazy owner (scenes of whom I enjoyed), the others felt unimportant. Finally, I must say that the narrative style initially gave me the feeling this was a translated piece of work and given the countries involved, I actually believed it to be the truth for a large chunk of the time. This was not a book for me, but as a drama with hints of the thriller genre, it might work for many other people.

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

God, this was dull.

Three things about me: one, I'm obsessed with botany. Two, I'm obsessed with twins. Three, I'm obsessed with Paris. So a novel that combined all these three things was bound to be a winner, right?

WRONG.

I just kept waiting for something to happen the whole way through, and nothing really did except from at the 90% mark, by which point I had understandably lost interest. A lot of the suspense from the majority of the book comes from the conflict between Renia and Estera, and what Renia did to make Estera so mad at her. Of course, that doesn't work when it's extremely obvious what Renia did. I was expecting some sort of twist, a sting in the tail, but instead I just had my suspicions that I'd had since 1% confirmed at 91%. Wunderbar.

There were also little things that annoyed me. This is going to sound so bitchy, but it was clear to me that the author was a horticulturalist and not a botanist. "A natural relative of fentanyl?" Really? She just picked the biggest, baddest drug that she could think of and made it part of the Violet Smoke, ignoring the fact that opioids come from poppies, and that opioids don't even WORK that way. It would have been far better if she'd just invented a chemical that didn't exist, instead of shoehorning it into something that does exist in a way that doesn't make any sense. Laziness and shock value.

Poland is also presented like a gulag in Cold War Siberia, a miserable place where people "only eat boiled cabbage and slimy pierogi" and vodka-drenched hobos lurk at the end of every street corner being unpleasant to everyone. I get that there was this whole theme of Renia wanting to go to Paris because it was so much more glamorous than Kraków, but there were better ways of doing that than making Poland seem like a horrible wasteland. Slimy pierogi? The author does know you're supposed to fry them after boiling them and they're not slimy like, say, Japanese gyoza (which are kinda slimy ngl but delicious)? The author states somewhere that she has Polish relatives, but that doesn't excuse this horrible portrayal of Poland - one of my good friends at university was Polish, and one of my exes was half-Polish, so I know a lot of stories about what Poland's like. Instead of focusing on the specific poverty/miserableness of Renia's family, the author presented the whole of Kraków like that.

And let's not even go into Estera saying she was going to leave Zbiggy because "she has self-respect", implying that women who stay in abusive relationships have no self-respect, perpetuating the whole "well, if you were so unhappy why didn't you just leave?" narrative.

AND let's not even talk about the incredibly obvious plothole of - if Zbiggy was being so annoying and just generally ruining Renia's life, why didn't she just use the flower to make him forget she ever existed? Like, are you straight up kidding me? Obviously she couldn't have done that because pLoT, but there should have been a big ol' reason why Renia couldn't do that, instead of just ignoring it and pretending there's not a plot hole the size of Cygnus X-1 in the middle of the narrative.

With this book, we follow Renia Baranczka. She has recently moved to Paris after dreaming of doing so for years. She is the manager of a flower shop — and darn good at her job. While living in Paris, Renia pretty much is just working and surviving, but she does have a friend named Alain. Alain lives across from the flower shop and was a frequent customer. When her friend is found out to be dead, though, we start to learn more about Renia’s past. Renia holds in her possession a special plant. Something given to her and her sister by the man who made it that has an unique use: The plant releases a peculiar fragrance that can erase a person’s memory. But Renia wonders, after learning of the death of Alain, could this plant have an even stronger power than she realizes?

The story has multiple parts. Sometimes, we’re in the past, learning about how the flower came to be in Renia’s possession. We’re learning why and how Renia left Krakow. We meet her twin sister, Estera, and — if you’re like me — feel the highs and lows of their relationship. Renia is trying to keep this plant hidden, both from the police in case it had something to do with her friend’s death, but also from a person from her past. Someone that has hurt her family over and over again. Someone who wants to use this plant for bad. Someone…someone that may have found their way to Paris.

Renia is a character that I still think about, 7 months after completing the book. The author, Karen Hugg is new to me but she was able to make a character that is so interesting, so intriguing, so well thought out, that they stick with you for a long time. I would happily read another book about Renia and what happens to her once The Forgetting Flower ends.

This book was promised to be a literary thriller and I agree that this book does qualify as both, at least partially. Written so beautifully with a story full of mystery, with some parts that definitely take you into aspects of the thriller genre. This is not a quick read, but instead, a book that one savors and enjoys over the course of days.

This book was a four-star read for me. Beautifully written with captivating characters, a slower-paced book that combines mystery and the literary fiction genre in such an interesting way, and with the added twist of the floral aspect just really combines to make a delightful read.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Magnolia Press for this e-copy in return for my honest review. Captivating story and engaging characters whom I definitely connected with. I didn't want this book to end.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this. I will be posting a full review to Goodreads, Amazon, and Instagram.

Secrets and half-truths. These litter Renia Baranczka’s past, but the city of Paris has offered an escape and the refuge of a dream job. The specialty plant shop buzzes with activity and has brought her to a new friend, Alain. His presence buffers the guilt that keeps her up at night, dwelling on the endless replays of what happened to her sister.

this book was great. it showed the struggles of being trapped by poverty and the sense of drowning that comes with it.

I really enjoyed it.

#ForgettingFlower #NetGalley
It was an ok read.
Secrets and half-truths. These litter Renia Baranczka’s past, but the city of Paris has offered an escape and the refuge of a dream job
What happened next? To know you have to read it. Characters are just ok but i didn't connect with them.

This was such an amazing read that I couldn’t put it down. It went everywhere with me. To the doctors office, the dentist, the eye doctor. IT WENT ABSOLUTELY EVERYWHERE. I was so sad when it ended that I immediately went and bought more books from this author!

This book had an older era feel to it, possibly because it floated between different cultures (Paris, Poland, Russia) and some of the characterizations were of a life style so different from current day. The secret of the flower, it's fragility, and the lengths sisters Renia and Estera went to protect it were fascinating, but I kept waiting for something more to happen. It bothered me that I couldn't figure out how Renia was able to so quickly entrench herself in such a great location of Paris, and that she blindly gave in to the shop owner, to her sister's ex-boyfriend who was trying to extort her, and to the mobsters who came after her for the plant. I found the book both beautiful and haunting, especially in its description of plants, but very difficult to focus on the story, which seemed to stand still at times.

This was an odd book. A good premise but I never felt quite as invested as I should have. I think I would have appreciated experiencing the story in more of a linear fashion as the transitions to the backstory never felt quite as natural as they could have and I still feel like we only had part of the story and we were told about her love for her sister not shown.

This was a captivating mystery. The suspense churns and the plot keeps you guessing. The author’s writing style is very atmospheric.
Many thanks to Magnolia Press and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book is well written and the characters are described well. I would recommend this book to anyone even though it wasn't my cup of tea. I would like to read more by this author though.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Magnolia Press, and Karen Hugg for an ARC in exchange for an honest book review of The Forgetting Flower. My thoughts and opinions are 100% my own and independent of receiving an advance copy.

This had such a solid premise. I mean a plant whose flowers make you forget? Yes!!! Think of all the possibilities and where do I sign up. Renia has left Poland, moved away from her whole family including her estranged twin sister. Trying to make a go of it in Paris, she works at a flower shop where, in the back, she has a special plant hidden away. When one of the shop’s best customer dies of an apparent suicide, Renia becomes worried the plant may be responsible. Around the time Renia is trying to avoid the police, the shop’s owner gives her some bad news. Renia is now going to be able to make ends meet financially.

Lo and behold, her sister’s ex-boyfriend shows up in Paris from Poland. He says he has customers who will pay dearly for the flowers of the plant and pay a lot of money. The boyfriend is bad news, treated her sister horribly, including beating her up. So, of course, Renia decides to do business with him. Now the Russians are involved and after a couple of deals, Renia can’t reconcile her conscience and wants to stop selling the flowers. She tries to work a couple of extra jobs to meet her financial commitments but is still having problems. But the really bad people want those flowers and are willing to do anything to get them. Including murder.

This story just didn’t do it for me. It wasn’t that interesting. The suspense never built up enough and I don’t think that I cared enough about the characters to be emotionally invested in their outcome. Renia tried to be a character with a moral compass. That never held true. She caved too easily when she was up against it. That’s when your moral compass has to kick in and stop you from doing things you know are bad. You’re supposed to hold onto what is right, even when it is the hard thing to do. She had a lot of options. She didn’t have to live in the expensive part of Paris. She could have found a different job. She could have left altogether. She knew the aftermath of using the flower.

Her decisions weren’t very sound. Why get into business with the one person whom you supposedly can’t stand. The one who beat up your twin sister and caused such a rift that you don’t speak to her anymore. The other characters in the story didn’t seem to be nice enough to care about. I didn’t have strong feelings one way or the other. The plant was the most interesting part, but it never developed. We knew it did something, but we never got to see it up close and personal. It would have been better to have a character in the story use it and for the reader to see the effects happen. Renia should have used it, maybe on the shop owner?

I can clearly see that I am in the minority but I didn’t really enjoy the story. I wasn’t caught up in it to care enough about the outcome. But I wasn’t railing against what was happening either. It just sort of plunked along. I was maybe a little bored? I was glad when it was over. I was hoping for much more.

I enjoyed the storyline but had a very hard time reading the book. There were a huge amount of characters, some Parisians, many Polish and any Russians. I occasionally forgot who was who and even what the flower did. A strange book but not unlikeable. Thank you to NetGalley and Magnolia Press for allowing me to read the arc!

Although it starts out with a death in the beginning, this book was slow for me and it took a while for me to get into the story. Once I did though I really enjoyed it and am so glad that I stuck with it. There were some fascinating facts and details about plants and horticulture that I really enjoyed. Once past the halfway mark, I was rooting for Renia up to the satisfying conclusion. Read this one with and open mind and stick with it, you won't be disappointed.

Thank you to Magnolia Press and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

“The Forgetting Flower” was hard to put down once I reached the halfway point. The beginning was a bit slow and sometimes the jumps between time periods were hard to follow. The story was beautifully written and the characters and scenes came to life before my eyes.