--- product_id: 1357372 title: "The Language of Flowers: A Novel" price: "B/.44" currency: PAB in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.com.pa/products/1357372-the-language-of-flowers-a-novel store_origin: PA region: Panama --- # Dual timeline narrative Victorian flower symbolism NYT Bestseller status The Language of Flowers: A Novel **Price:** B/.44 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Summary > 🌺 Unlock the secret language of flowers and emotions—read what everyone’s whispering about! ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Language of Flowers: A Novel - **How much does it cost?** B/.44 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.com.pa](https://www.desertcart.com.pa/products/1357372-the-language-of-flowers-a-novel) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Key Features - • **A Story Told in Two Times:** Experience a gripping dual timeline narrative that deepens emotional impact and keeps you hooked chapter after chapter. - • **Exclusive Community Access:** Unlock special features inside and join author chats—be part of an exclusive circle of passionate readers. - • **Decode Emotions Through Flowers:** Explore the rich Victorian language of flowers, where every bloom tells a story of love, mistrust, and hope. - • **A Bestseller That Speaks Volumes:** Ranked #15,701 in Books with over 18,000 glowing reviews—join the literary movement everyone’s talking about. - • **Emotional Depth Meets Literary Art:** Dive into a psychologically rich novel that explores isolation, redemption, and the power of human connection. ## Overview The Language of Flowers is a New York Times bestselling novel by Vanessa Diffenbaugh that intertwines Victorian floral symbolism with a poignant story of foster care, isolation, and redemption. Told through a dual timeline, it follows Victoria Jones as she navigates emotional scars and discovers the power of flowers to communicate what words cannot. With over 18,000 reviews and a strong presence in family saga and psychological fiction categories, this novel offers a deeply moving, literary experience enhanced by exclusive reader features and community engagement. ## Description NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The Victorian language of flowers was used to convey romantic expressions: honeysuckle for devotion, asters for patience, and red roses for love. But for Victoria Jones, it’s been more useful in communicating mistrust and solitude. After a childhood spent in the foster-care system, she is unable to get close to anybody, and her only connection to the world is through flowers and their meanings. Now eighteen and emancipated from the system with nowhere to go, Victoria realizes she has a gift for helping others through the flowers she chooses for them. But an unexpected encounter with a mysterious stranger has her questioning what’s been missing in her life. And when she’s forced to confront a painful secret from her past, she must decide whether it’s worth risking everything for a second chance at happiness. Look for special features inside. Join the Circle for author chats and more. Review: Read Again. Quickly --- Don't Wait - Only a day or two passed before I read “The Language of Flowers” a second time. Thank goodness. My memory, created during the first reading, holds story-holes. I created ugly potholes by not knowing which detail to understand, now or appreciate later --- during the first reading. And, holes need filling. Every detail, each symbol, each sub-theme, page by page means more to me now, almost as if I were beginning to learn a new language. The second reading shows and validates details and sub-themes missed the first time. “It feels as if I’m reading a different book,” I say to myself. And I anticipate each additional reading will thicken understanding of what the story shares. I love this story, as painful as it is at times.. During the first reading, I keep reading one more page, then one more chapter. Then I read another page, another chapter, on and on. To stop and wet my dry mouth and throat seems a time-waster. Each chapter introduces a surprise. Each chapter's last sentence keeps me anticipating the unexpected that Diffenbaugh will share next. While most of Victoria’s jaw-droppers displease me or make me feel uncomfortable, they keep fascinating and riveting my focus, as I read and turn page ... after page ... after page--- not able to stop. Two questions birth themselves and stay with me, as I move through this tale: • How real is this story? It feels like a dream, a bad one --- no, perhaps a nightmare, for all characters. • Why is the book called “The Language of Flowers?” The title feels light-hearted, maybe literary, even botanical --- almost, even artificial. Yet, I know it’s not. The second reading, I keep working to flesh-out a comfortable answer to the story’s purpose. Vanessa presents Victoria's story as a real-world experience --- yet it doesn’t feel believably so. Wounds and damages just don’t heal as quickly as the story's words and rhythms suggest, in real-life. I ask: Might this story’s content be identified as a blend or a collage of an adult contemporary fairy tale, a fantasy, a story of secular-mysticism, a fictional memoir, a surrealistic metaphor, an unfinished psychological case-study draft? Is it? I wonder. Perchance it’s imaginary. I keep searching the story’s content. “Is it phantasmagoria-like?" I ask myself. "Does the text hide a less obvious more meaningful or realistic solution?" Hmm? Coincidently, I watched Offenbach’s fabulous opera “Les Contes de’ Hoffmann,” between my first and second readings. With tears in my eyes, I recognize that in the epilogue, sung by the muse (Kate Lindsey) and The Metropolitan Opera Chorus*, I hear Offenbach’s music, and the English subtitles answer the two questions which developed during my first read. The opera’s ending words cause me to feel that Diffenbaugh’s muse might well have been like the one portrayed by Offenbach --- if not the same. I share some words from Hoffman's opera for your consideration: "Let the ashes of your heart rekindle your genius. “Smile upon your sorrows with serenity. “Your muse will comfort you. “Your suffering will be blessed. “One grows through love...and grows more through tears. “Let the ashes of your heart...rekindle your genius. “Smile upon your sorrows with serenity. “Your muse will comfort you. “Your suffering will be blessed. “Love lends man greatness. “Tears make him greater still. " “The Language of Flowers” is about much, much more than simply Victoria's (Diffenbaugh's) flowers' symbolic and mystical meanings. May you grow from the pain and suffering you are likely to feel, about Victoria and memories of your life-experiences, while you read this remarkable book. What will your favored flowers communicate to you? What will you be trying to communicate with the someone to whom you send your selected flowers? Victoria, Grant, and Elizabeth, and maybe you and me, grow and develop as we learn from life-experiences. And that we live individually and personally. Let your muse speak insights to you. As my reading-muse whispers insights from Diffenbaugh’s text, “The Language of Flowers” becomes increasingly valuable to me. Some reviewers give 5-stars when a book introduces them to something that feels as if it's giving them an insight that may change their life. "The Language of Flowers" might be one that carries life-modifying and enriching insights. Insights revealed while reading a book that is shared surreptitiously, simultaneously, with another work that peels similar scales from our eyes, unexpectedly --- even when 180-years separate one text and the other. As they did in this review's example. I gave the author’s book 4-stars when I finished the first read. After the second, I changed to 5-stars. Is there a rating higher than 5-stars, for me to use after I reread this wonderfully and beautifully written tale a third, fourth, and fifth time? Yes, there is --- even though there is no place to validate higher rankings with a checkmark. Instead, we may need to find a reading-muse to whisper Diffenbaugh’s secrets to us. And then be content with what we hear. *(December 19, 2009 performance) Review: an absorbing and redemptive novel about isolation, anger, flowers, and love. - The Language of Flowers is an absorbing and redemptive novel about isolation, anger, flowers, and love. The novel traces the life of Victoria Jones who is abandoned by her parents and placed in numerous foster homes. Victoria develops an intense anti-social attitude to all she comes in contact with including those who are genuine in their desire to help and even be affectionate towards her. The Language of Flowers provide the one thing that she can believe in. ‘I had been loyal to nothing except the language of flowers. If I started lying about it, there would be nothing left in my life that was beautiful or true.’ The Victorian language of flowers was used to express emotions: honeysuckle for devotion, azaleas for passion, and red roses for love. Victoria uses the language to express negative emotions like grief, mistrust and solitude. The novel starts slowly but builds to a shattering climax in the third part. Mystery and suspense are highly developed and it is only at the very end that all is revealed. The author gives us deep insight into Victoria and why she and many others develop into anti social beings. The reader can feel the intensity of the rage, the hatred and when it comes, the love, that Victoria feels. Victoria at times seems becoming a female version of Kevin (from “We need to talk about Kevin ”). Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s descriptions of flowers and food in particular are sensual and enjoyable. The novel is set in San Francisco, a beautiful city full of flowers in the summertime, an ideal setting for a book involving flowers. The chapter system kept me on edge. The chapters alternate between the younger 9-year-old Victoria and the 18-year-old Victoria. Parallel events occur in two time frames, so that fiascos, hospitalizations and moments of dramatic ripening in one time frame coincides with a similar event in the other. At times the author went too far with flowers. Flowers might be symbols but could a wild bouquet of mums and periwinkles cause someone to have true and tender recollections? The book is excessively female orientated. A woman writes it about a young woman who has a female child and searches for someone to be her mother. Men are few and not generally developed as characters. Victoria has a child with the one significant male character Grant. He is the big, strong, a great cook with somewhat motherly nature. A child is the product of a union between a man and a woman so it is morally wrong for a pregnant woman to take a child away without even consulting the father. Especially a father like Grant. ## Features - Novel ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #15,701 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #131 in Family Saga Fiction #310 in Psychological Fiction (Books) #1,012 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.4 out of 5 stars 18,411 Reviews | ## Images ![The Language of Flowers: A Novel - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81UCuufGfYL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Read Again. Quickly --- Don't Wait *by H***G on April 24, 2020* Only a day or two passed before I read “The Language of Flowers” a second time. Thank goodness. My memory, created during the first reading, holds story-holes. I created ugly potholes by not knowing which detail to understand, now or appreciate later --- during the first reading. And, holes need filling. Every detail, each symbol, each sub-theme, page by page means more to me now, almost as if I were beginning to learn a new language. The second reading shows and validates details and sub-themes missed the first time. “It feels as if I’m reading a different book,” I say to myself. And I anticipate each additional reading will thicken understanding of what the story shares. I love this story, as painful as it is at times.. During the first reading, I keep reading one more page, then one more chapter. Then I read another page, another chapter, on and on. To stop and wet my dry mouth and throat seems a time-waster. Each chapter introduces a surprise. Each chapter's last sentence keeps me anticipating the unexpected that Diffenbaugh will share next. While most of Victoria’s jaw-droppers displease me or make me feel uncomfortable, they keep fascinating and riveting my focus, as I read and turn page ... after page ... after page--- not able to stop. Two questions birth themselves and stay with me, as I move through this tale: • How real is this story? It feels like a dream, a bad one --- no, perhaps a nightmare, for all characters. • Why is the book called “The Language of Flowers?” The title feels light-hearted, maybe literary, even botanical --- almost, even artificial. Yet, I know it’s not. The second reading, I keep working to flesh-out a comfortable answer to the story’s purpose. Vanessa presents Victoria's story as a real-world experience --- yet it doesn’t feel believably so. Wounds and damages just don’t heal as quickly as the story's words and rhythms suggest, in real-life. I ask: Might this story’s content be identified as a blend or a collage of an adult contemporary fairy tale, a fantasy, a story of secular-mysticism, a fictional memoir, a surrealistic metaphor, an unfinished psychological case-study draft? Is it? I wonder. Perchance it’s imaginary. I keep searching the story’s content. “Is it phantasmagoria-like?" I ask myself. "Does the text hide a less obvious more meaningful or realistic solution?" Hmm? Coincidently, I watched Offenbach’s fabulous opera “Les Contes de’ Hoffmann,” between my first and second readings. With tears in my eyes, I recognize that in the epilogue, sung by the muse (Kate Lindsey) and The Metropolitan Opera Chorus*, I hear Offenbach’s music, and the English subtitles answer the two questions which developed during my first read. The opera’s ending words cause me to feel that Diffenbaugh’s muse might well have been like the one portrayed by Offenbach --- if not the same. I share some words from Hoffman's opera for your consideration: "Let the ashes of your heart rekindle your genius. “Smile upon your sorrows with serenity. “Your muse will comfort you. “Your suffering will be blessed. “One grows through love...and grows more through tears. “Let the ashes of your heart...rekindle your genius. “Smile upon your sorrows with serenity. “Your muse will comfort you. “Your suffering will be blessed. “Love lends man greatness. “Tears make him greater still. " “The Language of Flowers” is about much, much more than simply Victoria's (Diffenbaugh's) flowers' symbolic and mystical meanings. May you grow from the pain and suffering you are likely to feel, about Victoria and memories of your life-experiences, while you read this remarkable book. What will your favored flowers communicate to you? What will you be trying to communicate with the someone to whom you send your selected flowers? Victoria, Grant, and Elizabeth, and maybe you and me, grow and develop as we learn from life-experiences. And that we live individually and personally. Let your muse speak insights to you. As my reading-muse whispers insights from Diffenbaugh’s text, “The Language of Flowers” becomes increasingly valuable to me. Some reviewers give 5-stars when a book introduces them to something that feels as if it's giving them an insight that may change their life. "The Language of Flowers" might be one that carries life-modifying and enriching insights. Insights revealed while reading a book that is shared surreptitiously, simultaneously, with another work that peels similar scales from our eyes, unexpectedly --- even when 180-years separate one text and the other. As they did in this review's example. I gave the author’s book 4-stars when I finished the first read. After the second, I changed to 5-stars. Is there a rating higher than 5-stars, for me to use after I reread this wonderfully and beautifully written tale a third, fourth, and fifth time? Yes, there is --- even though there is no place to validate higher rankings with a checkmark. Instead, we may need to find a reading-muse to whisper Diffenbaugh’s secrets to us. And then be content with what we hear. *(December 19, 2009 performance) ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ an absorbing and redemptive novel about isolation, anger, flowers, and love. *by G***C on June 20, 2015* The Language of Flowers is an absorbing and redemptive novel about isolation, anger, flowers, and love. The novel traces the life of Victoria Jones who is abandoned by her parents and placed in numerous foster homes. Victoria develops an intense anti-social attitude to all she comes in contact with including those who are genuine in their desire to help and even be affectionate towards her. The Language of Flowers provide the one thing that she can believe in. ‘I had been loyal to nothing except the language of flowers. If I started lying about it, there would be nothing left in my life that was beautiful or true.’ The Victorian language of flowers was used to express emotions: honeysuckle for devotion, azaleas for passion, and red roses for love. Victoria uses the language to express negative emotions like grief, mistrust and solitude. The novel starts slowly but builds to a shattering climax in the third part. Mystery and suspense are highly developed and it is only at the very end that all is revealed. The author gives us deep insight into Victoria and why she and many others develop into anti social beings. The reader can feel the intensity of the rage, the hatred and when it comes, the love, that Victoria feels. Victoria at times seems becoming a female version of Kevin (from “We need to talk about Kevin ”). Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s descriptions of flowers and food in particular are sensual and enjoyable. The novel is set in San Francisco, a beautiful city full of flowers in the summertime, an ideal setting for a book involving flowers. The chapter system kept me on edge. The chapters alternate between the younger 9-year-old Victoria and the 18-year-old Victoria. Parallel events occur in two time frames, so that fiascos, hospitalizations and moments of dramatic ripening in one time frame coincides with a similar event in the other. At times the author went too far with flowers. Flowers might be symbols but could a wild bouquet of mums and periwinkles cause someone to have true and tender recollections? The book is excessively female orientated. A woman writes it about a young woman who has a female child and searches for someone to be her mother. Men are few and not generally developed as characters. Victoria has a child with the one significant male character Grant. He is the big, strong, a great cook with somewhat motherly nature. A child is the product of a union between a man and a woman so it is morally wrong for a pregnant woman to take a child away without even consulting the father. Especially a father like Grant. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I loved this novel... magical story *by A***R on February 22, 2012* "The Language of Flowers" by Vanessa Diffenbaugh was highly recommended by a book blogger whose opinions and tastes in books I respect very much. So, naturally, I had high expectations. I was not disappointed, although the review on the blog made me think that the novel would be completely different from what it really was... The novel begins on Victoria Jones' eighteenth birthday. It is also her last day in foster care, and she has to move to the "halfway house", where she can live for free for three months, while looking for a job. The advice of her social worker, Meredith, is to find a job as soon as possible. But Victoria had been hardly listening to Meredith's advice throughout her life (and failed numerous adoption attempts as a result), so now she also ignores it. And, sure enough, when the three months are up, she finds herself living in the nearby park... Only then things begin to be interesting. Victoria, antisocial and grumpy, has one passion: flowers. She knows virtually all about them, how to grow them, arrange them, and, as a bonus, she is familiar with the symbolic flower language. And... well, it should be enough to say that miracles do happen. Victoria embarks on the way to her own happiness, learns how to live her own life not hurting herself and others, and manages to help a lot of people. The novel features frequent retrospective chapters, going back to the time when Victoria was ten and the last adoption attempt was taking place. The memories are explanatory for the reader, but at the same time serve as a catharsis for Victoria, whose actions are affected very much by her thoughts and grievances about the past. "The Language of Flowers" has everything a good novel needs: a great, emotionally loaded and well-told story, interesting cast of characters (dominated, but not completely overshadowed by the main character). Victoria is so withdrawn, misogynic and solitary, that it is obvious she needs love and affection. I am always drawn to such characters and this one was no exception. The welcome original "spice", which is made the theme in the book, is the flower symbolic. I was really fascinated by the less obvious meanings of flowers and plants. Of course, everyone knows that red roses symbolize love, but who would suspect that basil (my favorite herb...) is the symbol of hate or that moss signifies maternal love... I think that the ending was a little rushed, but all in all, it is a great novel and a pleasure to read. ## Frequently Bought Together - The Language of Flowers: A Novel - Floriography: An Illustrated Guide to the Victorian Language of Flowers (Volume 1) (Hidden Languages) - A Victorian Flower Dictionary: The Language of Flowers Companion --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.com.pa/products/1357372-the-language-of-flowers-a-novel](https://www.desertcart.com.pa/products/1357372-the-language-of-flowers-a-novel) --- *Product available on Desertcart Panama* *Store origin: PA* *Last updated: 2026-07-26*