So you’ve got a bit of a pessimistic outlook on your love life, or on love in general. In light of that outlook, you may want to read a love story every now and again, I admit that this is one of my guilty pleasures, but because you’re on the pessimistic side sometimes the happily-ever-after ending can get on your nerves. You just want something real, right? That’s how I feel, and the perfect remedy for this feeling (when I didn’t even know I was feeling such a feeling) was The Tulip Factory by Kacie Davis Idol.
To quote the novel, “it was great because it was real.” This novel shows the nitty-gritty of a relationship; right from the beginning all the way to after it ends and the aftershocks of a relationship touching your soul and changing you as a person. Something that I found perplexing at times was trying to keep up with the timelines. The first chapter of the story explains a bit of where the main character Corrine is in the aftermath of her relationship with James. After that the reader watches their romance unfold, and eventually wither away. As the book description states, timing is not on this couple’s side. While they will clearly always love one another, their lives moved them in different directions and they cannot be together for that reason.
This is Idol’s debut novel, which was published by Inkshares (a publisher that allows anyone to submit a book idea, and once the idea has garnered enough interest, they produce the novel). I found it to be full of inspiration and it helped me to appreciate things as they happen in case they do not last. It makes you rethink some of the things that you may take for granted, and helps you to come to peace with things that you regret having taken for granted in the past.
I loved this short book because it was so real. None of the characters were perfect, if anything they were perfect only because they were flawed just as any other person is. Overall, I believe that The Tulip Factory is an example of exactly how an ending can be a new beginning, and can inspire people to look at the chapter endings of their life to find the new beginnings. I gave this book five stars out of five, and would recommend it to anyone struggling in love or struggling to see how one door closing can lead to another door opening.
Republished from The Quill print edition, Volume 107, Issue 16, January 4, 2017.