I was surprised by this novel, Flowers of Darkness, by Tatiana de Rosnay! This story is a complete departure from Historical Fiction and actually is a dark and compelling mystery set in a dystopian Paris of the future.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Netgalley, St.Martin’s Press and Tatiana de Rosnay for free e-ARC in return of my honest review.

Lately I struggle with rating system for books. First of all, reading is very personal and what one loves and enjoys might be boring and uninspiring for another. Second, rating is very subjective. A new book by Tatiana de Rosnay
~Flowers of Darkness~ is a clear example of rating gone wrong (my personal opinion).

Yes, the story has flows. Plot line is misleading and confusing. Time frame is hard to understand- it our time or future? Everything is barely explain and when it got explained, it opens up even more questions.

However, it has its charm. If the story telling has some weaknesses, the writing style is flawless. The author’s ability to create a place (in this instance new apartment of the protagonist) as modern as it could be but hollow and empty. Especially, when protagonist strive to create cozy and livable space, she struggle to do so in a new place. I actually think that that apartment was another character in the story which helps the protagonist to evolve.

I did enjoy Flowers of Darkness and urge you not to rely on any ratings and always judge by yourself 🙌🏻

I’m still thinking about this novel almost a week after I finished reading it. It’s creepy and disturbing!

The story is set in the near-future in Paris (I peeked at other online reviews, and they guess the time frame to be somewhere anywhere from 10 to 50 years ahead.). Life on the whole has not really changed that much, except that many of the world’s most recognizable landmarks are gone---having been bombed (The Eiffel Tower and the Sistine Chapel are two that are mentioned.) years earlier and climate change is in full bloom.

Clarissa Katsef has left her husband of twenty years because of his infidelity. She has applied for residency at one of the most high-apartment buildings in Paris, not that far from where the Eiffel Tower once stood. It’s a residence meant to encourage art---from musicians, to painters, to writers, to sculptors. Clarissa is a writer with several notable book to her name. She is accepted, to her surprise, and snags the top eighth floor apartment.

The apartment in very, very, very high-tech. It comes with a personal assistant, whom she has named Mrs. Dalloway, after her favorite writer Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway is creepy al by herself! The residents are filmed at all times (for “security reasons”), except when they are in the toilet room and hit the option of “intimate mode” for sex while in the bedroom.

Clarissa is trying to figure out what direction her life should take. She has her daughter, Jordan, and her granddaughter, Andy, her first husband, Toby, and a cat named Chablis. Her current Francois is trying desperately to get her to come home. Clarissa had just walked out, leaving all her possessions behind.

It is Andy who first mentions the clicking noise and other odd happenings that Clarissa thought were the result of trying to write another book and the break-up of her marriage. Now Clarissa must investigate what in the heck she has gotten herself into. She makes friends with another resident, but he promptly disappears.

Intermixed with all this drama are a few journal entries where Clarissa tries to find Francois’ mistress, and what she discovers is horrifying and disturbing. I won’t even get into that part of the novel.

Technology is great, it’s wonderful, but de Rosnay gives readers a peek into what our future holds that doesn’t really appeal to me.

I don’t know really how to score this novel. I want to give it 5 stars since it has stuck with me; 3 stars for it’s creepy and disturbing nature. I can’t say I would recommend it, but I wouldn’t say whatever you do, don’t read this one. Therefore, Flowers of Darkness receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

2.5 ⭐️‘s
Set in a future Paris, this book had all the right ingredients, but somehow they got mixed wrong. When Clarissa abruptly leaves her husband and moves into a smart apartment, she quickly senses something is amiss. Noises in the night, dreams, a sense of always being watched. Paranoia sets in and with a history of depression, only her granddaughter (Andy) believes her. With a great premise, this book never quite delivered what we were looking for and with a non ending and so many unanswered questions, this was a disappointment!

Sarah’s Key is a book I’ll always remember. It’s one that carved out a section of your heart. I was excited to read the latest by this wonderful author.

Flowers of Darkness is completely different. The creepiness of the apartment building, and the AI which brought some science fiction vibe to it challenges the reader to think “what if”. I think we are much closer to AI in our lifetime than we should be comfortable with.

Solid read by an author not afraid to take chances with her writing. I agree with some of the other readers about the ending being rushed and unfulfilling though.

An author struggling to write her next book gets what she thinks is the perfect apartment in Paris. It's safe and modern and wonderful, but maybe too much...

Ask any writer what she needs to finish her latest project, and most will reply with that timeless Virginia Woolf answer – a room of her own. Freed from mundane responsibilities such as cooking, cleaning, child care, and that pesky day job, most of us wannabe writers have a fantasy that if only we could isolate ourselves in a home fully equipped to serve our writing needs, we’d be quickly finishing our masterpieces.

In Tatiana de Rosnay’s new book, Flowers of Darkness, author Clarissa Katsef is given an opportunity to live in such a place, a modern artist’s colony where her every need is taken care of by her apartment’s AI assistant, whom she’s named Mrs. Dalloway.

For the complete review, click on the link below:

I read this ARC for an honest review
All thoughts and opinions are mind

I love this author and was thrilled to be able to read this

I found this a bit slow going for me. The setting also didn't grab me I'm afraid

I found it a bit disappointing and am really sad about that as usually I absolutely love her books

If you do want to discover the author - read Sarah's key rather than this one

I received a complimentary digital copy of this book from the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

In this futuristic setting in Paris, Clarissa Katsef is in search for a new home after leaving her husband, Francois Antoine after a long marriage. She is a writer and acclaimed author of a book called The Topography of Intimacy in which she shares her views on the lives of authors based on their living space. “It’s about writers and the link between their work, their homes, their intimacy, and their suicides, particularly Virginia Woolf and Romain Gary. It’s a novel, not an essay.” Her daughter Jordan doesn't seem to understand why her mother has suddenly decided to leave Francois who happens to be her mother's second husband. Clarissa loves and cherishes her time with her ambitious 15 year old granddaughter, Adriana whenever she can.

The story begins to raise curiosity when in search of a flat, Clarissa encounters someone who recommends she apply for housing in a special building run by CASA for artists. Although the interview process seems extremely personal, she continues as the rent is reasonable and they seem to offer some amenities not typical in most flats. Clarissa is excited to learn she has been selected to live in this building amongst other like minded people. She does find some of the "rules" regarding her living situation odd and increasingly demanding but endures questioning her own personal choices. It seems the place is "outfitted" with a virtual assistant who has been programmed specifically for Clarissa with the ability to read and respond to her texts and emails. It almost feels like a dream come true to have such convenience and safety as even the building screens visitors before allowing entrance.

Life begins to become freaky when Clarissa finds she cannot sleep and begins to feel like she is being watched all the time. She begins to question her own sanity when bizarre events occur and even her cat seems spooked. This is a cautionary tale about the convenience and dangerous of artificial intelligence and how much control others could have over you with too much information.

Weird. That's how I would describe this book. Not unsettling, not bad, not necessarily good, just weird. We have our main character who moves into a new apartment, and she has a Siri type digital assistance who is always listening, always ready to help, to the point that it becomes dangerous. This "Siri" even reports back to the apartment managers and our main character has standards she needs to uphold to continue to live in such esteemed sort of place.



Honestly, it was a little too bougie for me, and didn't really seem like the right type of story to come from de Rosnay, who also wrote Sarah's Key. The writing is fabulous. The dialog and the story itself, I suppose, is strong. But yeah, I just thought the whole concept in general, and then the execution, once written out....fell flat. I didn't work for me.



3/5 Stars

I love Tatiana de Rosnay and her books. Sarah's Key is one of my absolute favorite books, so anytime she has a new book out, I make sure to read it. And I'm a sucker for all things French. However, I've found that her last few books have been ones that I just couldn't connect with. Flowers of Darkness is a slow story with no action and the post apocalyptic setting just wasn't my jam. I will, however, wait patiently for her next book. Thank you St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

A great opportunity puts the heroine of this tale in Paris of the future. A writer who has secured this wonderful look at life in a future still grappling with issues current today. A touch of writers block, Clarrisa is hoping her residency will open not only her talent but Paris will heal her heart. Recovering from her husbands betrayal, she enlists her granddaughter to help her shake the feeling she is being observed. A first for me for Tatiana de Rosnay. I hope it won’t be your last. Happy reading

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and give an honest review of this book.

Established author, Clarissa, leaves her husband and finds a place to live in a residence established for artists of all types. The story takes place in a future Paris where a terrorist attack has left the city reeling and still stunned.

I enjoyed the freshness of having a “with-it” grandmother as the protagonist in the story. When Clarissa begins to feel something is very disturbing about all of the technology in her living quarters, she enlists the aid of her teenage granddaughter. She has a very close relationship with this young girl. Together they try to discover what is behind the strange occurrences in the apartment building.

This book is quite dystopian and unusual in many aspects. This book is very different from the others by this author. Some may enjoy it. It just was not the book for me.

This was a interesting read set in Paris in a near future, with artificial intelligence and everything! I really enjoyed the story and of course Tatiana's lyrical writing.The premise was unique and interesting coupled with a woman's loneliness, loss of love and her courage to break free from it all and be happy again.

This seemed like two books, only tangentially related as a plot device. On the one hand, we have an elderly writer, Clarissa, struggling through a very creepy experience in her new apartment. On the other, we have the story of loss and grief that is her past. The story of her past is interwoven through the near-future science fiction of the story of her apartment.

There are elements of a mystery here, though not a murder mystery. As readers, we experience Clarissa’s confusion as she attempts to make sense of her experiences in the apartment building, determine who is behind them, and reach safety. And we follow her into her past investigation of her ex-husband, attempting to find a different type of safety. Many of the scenes that take place in her apartment are suffused with menace, making parts of this book into a suspenseful thriller. But the book is also clearly science fiction, and it at least strives to be a literary piece.

The premise of this book sounded great, but unfortunately, it didn't hold up for me. I have to admit that I read the first half of the book, and then I skipped to the last chapter. I did like the last chapter, though. Sadly, I understood exactly what happened without reading the second half of the book.

I was given this book for my honest review. I give this book two out of five stars.

My book club (and I think every other book club) read Sarah's Key back around 2006 when it first came out. That is the only book that I've read by Tatiana de Rosnay, so in my mind I had her in the WWII Historical Fiction author category. Well, color me surprised when this latest release from de Rosnay is NOT historical fiction but is instead near future fiction. The book is still set in Paris, like Sarah's Key, but has a completely different vibe.

Clarissa Katsef is an author living in Paris in the years following a series of terrorist attacks and climate change. The city is a much different place than we know today. Bees are extinct so flowers are very rare, deadly heat waves strike regularly. Clarissa has recently left her 2nd husband after he's betrayed her. She winds up living in a new ultra modern artist's residence where all of the apartments are occupied by writers, painters and the like. Each unit is wired with a Virtual Personal Assistant (think Alexa or Siri) and the residents must undergo regular health evaluations run by the mirror in their bathrooms. Clarissa starts becoming paranoid about her living situation and ropes in her teenaged granddaughter to help her investigate.

So, this ended up being way more suspenseful than I would've thought initially. But, I really enjoyed the ride! There were themes of betrayal, grief and moving on. There was also a lot about "sense of place", which was actually on of the main focuses of Clarissa's writing. I recommend this book to anyone who thinks that the Siri, GoogleHome, and Alexa are going to take over the world. ;)

I do not even know where to start with this book. This was such a compelling and engaging story. I loved the prose and how it was literary fiction with a hint of an unsettling atmosphere. The first 80% of this book was perfect to me. The ending was goods but may be polarizing to some people. I think this book is best to go into blind.

A little bit of The Veldt, a little bit of Feed... with a healthy dose of The Hours.... wonderful, scary, excruciating... this had it all. But, I sort of expected a different ending...

I was surprised by this novel, Flowers of Darkness, by Tatiana de Rosnay! I loved her novel, Sarah's Key and it left a mark on my heart llike no other book. It was on my mind and on my heart for quite some time after I read it.
Flowers of Darkness is a complete departure from Historical Fiction and actually is a dark and compelling mystery set in a dystopian Paris of the future. Clarrisa has been admitted to a prestigious new Artist in Residence program in an ultra-chic and high tech apartment building. It seems the absolute dream for a writer who longs for uninterrupted time and space as well as quiet. The program is called CASA but who is behind it and what does this acronymn mean? And why does Clarrisa feel so uncomfortable, uneasy, and just off kilter. She has the feeling she is being watched but is this just her being paranoid? This novel is also a mystery and thriller. It moves at a fast pace and you are left turning the pages to find out if the robots are real and what is artificial intelligence and how is it impacting Clarrisa's daily life? And is this part of art of the future?
I think it's very scary to realize in the future there can be AI so sophiscated that we are unable to distinguish between it and what is truly human and real! How with this impact our lives, relationships, and love?
i hesitate to judge this book harshly as I'm not a lover of this genre. But sometimes, it's good to step outside your box.