Fresh Water For Flowers | Jane Eyre & Wuthering Heights in a Cemetery

Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin

Published: June 2nd, 2020

Genre: Adult Fiction | Contemporary | Romance

AMAZON | GOODREADS 


  Synopsis:  Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Random visitors, regulars, and, most notably, her colleagues—three gravediggers, three groundskeepers, and a priest—visit her as often as possible to warm themselves in her lodge, where laughter, companionship, and occasional tears mix with the coffee that she offers them. Her daily life is lived to the rhythms of their hilarious and touching confidences.

Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of a man—Julien Sole, local police chief—who insists on depositing the ashes of his recently departed mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. It soon becomes clear that the grave Julien is looking for belongs to his mother’s one-time lover, and that his mother’s story of clandestine love is intertwined with Violette’s own secret past.

With Fresh Water for Flowers, Valérie Perrin has given readers a funny, moving, intimately told story of a woman who believes obstinately in happiness. Parrin has the rare talent of illuminating what is exceptional and poetic in what seems ordinary. A #1 best-seller in France, Fresh Water for Flowers is a delightful, atmospheric, absorbing fairy tale full of poetry, generosity, and warmth.

      First, I would like to thank Netgalley and Europa Editions for an ARC to review; but all thoughts and opinions are personally my own.


This book was a lot like reading Jane Eyre again for me, I got invested in the main character and throughout the book, it was impossible not to feel my heart being torn in two for her.

I bawled like a baby several points in this book, and the characters just kept circulating in my mind for days afterward! The characters and what they'd been through just played on my emotions so much 😭!


The characters you hated for most of the book you ended up crying for and even the side characters you loved and felt so attached to.


However, while the characters' lives and stories were so heartfelt I couldn't ignore the fact that most of the book bugged me a bit.


  1. Everyone and I mean everyone (even if they were happily married) cheated on their spouse. It was insane.
  2. There were so many things that I wished and that could've been so different, but they weren't and it was very tragic and mostly fell down to miscommunication and the fact that no one could read each others' minds.
  3. There was resolve. But the ''happy ending'', wasn't that happy to me.

  Despite that though, the author did amazing at making the characters real to the readers and making you feel sympathy for them and wanting them to be happy for once in their freaking lives!


  If some things had gone differently I would've rated the book higher, but though this book pinched my heart and still has me thinking about it some of the things really bugged me.
 However, if it sounds interesting to you I definitely suggest you give it a try.

  The low rating is just my personal opinion. While the ending was supposed to be ''happy'' for Violette and I understand that it probably was to some people; it wasn't one I was happy with almost at all. (But seriously, freaking talking to each other would've made several couples much happier earlier in the book.) 


I will say, this is absolutely not for younger audiences. Definitely for adults that need a good cry!

 I truly suggest you guys try this book on your own and form your own opinions about it because it's one that I was so invested emotionally but I most likely will have uncommon thoughts on.


If you do give it a read, please let me know your thoughts!!


Thanks for reading!!
~Books with Noel