Book Review: The Truth about Dandelions by Hayley Linfield

Review: The Truth about Dandelions
Series: —
Author: Hayley Linfield
No of Pages: 300
Release Date: May 31st 2012 by Wolf on Water

Synopsis:

Mara isn’t a slut; she just can’t find what she wants. She wants to forget her mother’s death, her father’s hypocrisy, and the plane crash that follows her. As a child she couldn’t understand why the grass never got cut, and now as she gropes her way through university life, all those weeds, those dandelions, have stayed with her, haunting her dreams.

She can’t see a way out of her dark hole until she gets hit by a car on an Ottawa street and starts spending time with Jack, the guy behind the wheel. Kind, thoughtful, and a virgin – he’s the last person she’d ever expected to fall for.

As she opens up to Jack, the wounds she’d been trying to ignore surface, and she’s forced to finally choose between running from or facing the past that’s been haunting her all her life. Through nights out looking for release to the ultimate event that forces her to face herself, Mara finally learns the truth about dandelions.

My thoughts:

This is a really thoughtful, thought provoking and deeply spiritual book. Funnily enough the main character doesn’t want anything to do with religion due to the way she was raised but it’s the journey that made it spiritual for me not her thoughts on religion.

And Mara’s journey was intense. She figured out very early in childhood that she couldn’t trust anyone, that everyone leaves, that she wasn’t worthy of love. It was intense reading what she was trying to do to fill that void and how much she hated herself afterward. And scary too because I know I’ve been there and it’s hard to read a book that is just so real about life and love and the search for happiness when you honestly think you don’t deserve any.

This book isn’t all dreary though! Don’t get me wrong, it’s about lessons and consequences, sure, but it’s also about finding THAT person and doing the right thing in life and learning how to not hate yourself. Mara’s choices in life varied but you can see her growth and I loved that about this plot. You can also see that she wasn’t trying to push people away she just didn’t know any other way to protect herself. I felt like I grew with her, cried with her, laughed and smiled.

If you’re religious I would read this with an open mind. Mara didn’t get the way she was overnight. Her father was a preacher and a hypocrite but Mara realizes not everyone that is a Christian is a hypocrite. Again, it’s her journey that makes this so interesting and there is quite a bit of spiritual learning that she has to go through to move on. So, religious? Definitely read with an open mind. Not religious but don’t like books with religion? I actually found the religious parts quite funny and a bit of a comic relief with her feelings on the entire thing.

Ending was just as good as the entire book. The characters are deep. I loved each one of them so much, although I knew who I was pulling for at the end. 😉

About the author:

Hayley Linfield has a wide variety of publishing credits, from newspaper essays to horror stories to literary fiction. She recently won the Alice Munro Short Story Competition and is looking forward to her upcoming publication in Red Claw Press’ new anthology, Seek it. She lives in the small town of Goderich in South-Western Ontario with her husband, two sons and aging, neurotic dog.

She’s a nerd, spending her free time playing Scrabble and practicing her clarinet.

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon