This book left me happy. It’s about connection, and sharing of oneself, and joy. It’s cozy, and full of love and warmth.
And like a number of Japanese and South Korean novels I’ve read recently, it’s about how one woman’s kindness and openness brings a number of disparate people together, and brings them all hope, love, and community.
We meet Chloe in New York City; she has just been laid off as a school counsellor. She's depressed, worried about how to pay rent, and even though her current boyfriend says something will turn up, Chloe feels down in the dumps.
She decides to turn to origami, something that has always brought her much comfort and happiness. She begins making yellow paper roses, and giving them out, randomly in the city. When she sees how people are uplifted by the sensitive and kind messages she leaves in the flowers, she decides to make more, sitting in Central Park, and then travel around the city, giving them out.
We also meet Oliver, a closed off young man who works as a financial analyst in New York City. He's tense, unhappy with a particular coworker, who happens to be Chloe's boyfriend and who is doing his best to sabotage Oliver's work efforts. Oliver is lonely, and feels incredibly responsible for taking care of his younger brother and his disabled father. He feels he has no room in his life for anything but sensible pursuits.
Years earlier, Chloe and Oliver were best friends, and did everything together. Then one day, he and his family disappeared without a trace, with young Chloe devastated. She eventually moved on, and years later, ended up in NYC.
In the present, Chloe's yellow paper roses begin bringing happiness to random strangers and comments begin proliferating about these roses on social media. A small number of people Chloe has touched begin helping her, sitting in the park and making paper flowers with her. Oliver ends up getting one, and he's annoyed with it, as he feels his life has no room in it for whimsy, after the terrible things that split him and Chloe apart. He disparages the kind of hopefulness and trust that Chloe constantly leaves herself open to.
That these two would eventually connect, and take things further, was a given, but how author Evelyn Skye got us there was lovely. This is a heartwarming, sweet story, and I just loved this.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Atria Books for this ARC in exchange for my review.