Review: Tahira in Bloom

Tahira in Bloom, by Farah Heron (Skyscape 2021)

First line: “One fateful spring day when I was only seven, I learned two things.”

At the beginning of most months, I’ll scroll through Amazon’s First Reads options (a feature for Prime members that allows you to download a free book before it’s been released), and this was the one that intrigued me the most for the month: when in the first sentence of the description, the editor makes comparisons to Jenny Han, Schitt’s Creek, and The Big Flower Fight, that’s the one you download, friends.

Tahira Janmohammad is an aspiring fashion designer who had her hot summer internship thwarted by a mishap with her mentor, so is stuck working at her aunt’s small boutique in small town middle-of-nowhere Canada for 8 weeks. The only upside is that’s she’s managed to convince her best friend to come with her. If there’s one thing Janmohammads know best, it’s making it work. Tahira is determined to make the most out of her summer and get the experience she needs for her fashion school application.

But things go from annoying to bad when the first thing she does when she rolls into town is to dump a bag full of manure down her new suede boots, and from bad to worse when she realizes she’s living in a tiny house in the middle of an epic garden — killer for her allergies. Not to mention that her next door neighbor is a (very cute) guy who already can’t stand her, and her aunt’s “boutique” is a store that caters to primarily retired hippy flower people.

I’m realizing I kind of hate the “this situation is the absolute worse and I’m going to be a whiny b-word about it until I realize it’s actually a dream scenario” trope, and this falls directly into that category. (So did The Simple Wild, come to think of it.) It seems to be a sub-genre of the enemies-to-lovers trope. Tahira drove me bonkers for the first half of this book. I didn’t care about her problems, because honestly working in a small town clothing store surrounded by gorgeous gardens tended to by my hottie neighbor sounds like the *perfect* summer to me. Cry me a river, Tahira. Fortunately, as usually happens in these scenarios, Tahira realizes how ridiculous she’s being, how half her worries can be solved by a better antihistamine pill, and then we all get to bask in the joy of it for a while before the complication at the end. And that joy-filled middle part was a lot of fun. I didn’t even hate the complication at the climax, and the resolution was picture perfect, while still maintaining a semblance of realism. I think the intended audience will gobble this one right up and demand a Netflix adaptation. Do I think the editor’s comparisons were warranted? The Big Flower Fight, yes, I guess so. The others? I wouldn’t go that far.