"Do you mind me asking--what kind of help do you need?"
After losing her job and her fiancé and moving back from the city to live with her parents, Shell Pine needs some help. And according to the sign in the window, the florist shop in the mall does too. Shell gets the gig, and the flowers she works with there are just the thing she needs to cheer up. Or maybe it's Neve, the beautiful shop manager, who is making her days so rosy?
But you have to get your hands dirty if you want your garden to grow--and Neve's secrets are as dark and dangerous as they come. In the back room of the flower shop, a young sentient orchid actually runs the show, and he is hungry . . . and he has a plan for them all.
When the choices are to either bury yourself in the warmth of someone else's fertile soil, or face the cold and disappointing world outside--which would you choose? And what if putting down roots came at a cost far higher than just your freedom?
This is a story about desire, dreams, decay--and working retail at the end of the world.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
After breaking up with her fiancé, losing her job, and moving back in with her parents in the Dublin suburbs, Shell Pine feels like a failure. When she sees a "Help Needed" sign at a flower shop in the run-down Woodbine Crown Mall, Shell takes the job, grasping for anything to change her life. Not only are the flowers a pick-me-up, but her new boss, Neve, is just as lovely. Neve has a secret, however: deep in the center of the mall is Baby, an orchid with an appetite, and Neve belongs to him. He hungers for her, and no matter what--or who--she feeds to him, all he wants is to consume her. He won't let anyone get in the way of his love. The ultimate complex relationship story, this horrific tale is infused with humor and wit via Griffin's prose. VERDICT YA author Griffin (Other Words for Smoke) makes her adult debut with a queer take on Little Shop of Horrors that offers a unique narrator, a celebration of dying malls, and all the facets of love and desire. Fans of John Wiswell's Someone You Can Build a Nest In should pick this up.--Kristi Chadwick
Publishers Weekly Review
At the start of this heartrending gothic horror story from Griffin (Other Words for Smoke), Michelle "Shell" Pine has just lost her job, broken up with her fiancé, and moved back into the jumble of her parents' house in the Dublin suburbs. She needs a win and jumps on the first opportunity she's seen in months: a HELP NEEDED sign in the window of a flower shop in a decaying mall. Her new boss, Neve--beautiful, mysterious, and fresh off her own broken engagement--has secrets Shell can't wait to unravel. But Neve's secrets run deeper than Shell could imagine: she's the keeper of a massive, monstrous orchid that's taken over the mall's infrastructure and Neve's whole life. Not content with Neve simply helping it survive, the orchid wants to possess and consume her totally. Now Shell is caught in the middle of a love story, both her own and one much stranger and more terrifying. Griffin makes a premise that could feel a bit too Little Shop of Horrors instead feel lush, eerie, and sensual through prose that's equal parts romantic and horrifying. This poignant and original examination of desire and decay is a stunner. (Apr.)
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