TOO MANY BLOOMS

Delphinium Bloom loves helping out in her grandparents’ flower shop in their small New Hampshire town. When they leave the business in her parents’ hands for three months, Del is determined to help her disorganized family succeed in the venture. But her parents and three younger sisters, twins Rose and Aster, plus little Poppy, have their own, sometimes weird, ideas. Meanwhile, at school Del has her hands full coping with her first crush and her “arch nemesis” Ashley, the personification of snooty, rich-girl meanness. Emotionally flat, despite lavish use of exclamation marks, the book’s meager allotment of suspense flows from Del’s boy worries—does crush-object Hamilton prefer Ashley to her?—and business worries, which carry more emotional weight. Can the shop land a job providing flowers for a huge wedding (the bride is Ashley’s wealthy cousin) or will it lose out to the new flower shop in the mall with its high-tech bells and whistles? However, the transparently unoriginal concept, characters, plot complications and resolution of this cliché-fest feel recycled from other, better novels. It’s hard to care about a product that no more resembles genuine storytelling than a bouquet of artificial flowers does the real thing. (Fiction. 8-12)