Must Love Flowers

by Debbie Macomber

As may know, Debbie Macomber, after forty years of writing, put aside her pen for a well deserved retirement. That lasted for four months before she picked up her pen to compose Must Love Flowers, a sweet romance about a widow who is in her fifties and needs to move on with the grieving process and can’t seem to do so. I’m glad Macomber decided to tell this tale.

I don’t normally read anything about the Covid fiasco, but I could tolerate it in this book because it is not set during the restrictions, but shows the negative effects on someone who maintains feelings of being “safe” and “protected” by continuing to cut herself off from people and activities—life, in short. Family members want to help her, but are at a loss as she is in denial that she has a problem.

This novel tells Joan’s story as she takes a few steps at a time to rejoin the world and find her new place in it. Joan was pushed into these changes by threats from her HOA because in four years she has let the yard she was once proud of become an overgrown mess. Enter Phil Harrison, a former lawyer, who is currently a landscaper and a really nice person. She even decides to take in a boarder, Maggie, who needs to get out from under her alcoholic father. Along the way she joins a grief therapy group, which she had said she would never do. The ramifications of Joan’s decisions reach out to affect the lives of her two grown sons and their relationships with others.

I enjoyed this novel which contains several romantic threads. When one of the twists occurred, I was sad because it potentially meant good things for some characters and bad for others, but Macomber works the situations out for her characters in a way that is both realistic and satisfying for me.  

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Rating: 5/5

Category: Romance

Publication: July 11, 2023—Random House (Ballentine)

Memorable Lines:

It used to be…  That was what her life had become: a series of all the things that once were but were no longer.

As silly as it sounded, she recognized deep down with a certainty that she didn’t question that she was meant to help Maggie Herbert. For whatever reason, God had put Maggie in her path.

“It didn’t take me long to realize it didn’t matter how much money I had in the bank, or what my career goals were; if I didn’t have someone to share life with, they meant nothing.