Flowers for the Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn

If you follow the bookish people on social media, I bet you’ve seen people praising this book here, there, and everywhere. There’s a reason for all of the praise. This book isn’t one you finish and forget. It’ll stick with ya whether you want it to or not and that is the mark of an excellent read if you ask me.Flowers for the Sea is a gorgeously told tale of rage, isolation, and all the unearthly hells that the sea and sky have up for offer in this bleak universe created by author Zin E. Rocklyn. The sea is angry, the sky is angry but most of all the heroine of this tale is angry. And justifiably so.She is stuck on a godforsaken sea vessel as the world dies. She is heavily pregnant with a child that she fears may not be 100% human. Who knows? This world has been turned upside down. At any rate, she doesn’t want it and she has no say in the matter. She is surrounded by people she despises, people who despise her, people who have made her an outcast time and time again. They may live what’s left of their miserable lives on this horrible ship. But her rage simmers and she keeps going out of pure spite. She is an incredibly written character. There is a lot packed into this thin novella. The prose is filled with suffocating anger and descriptions of the dank, disgusting, rotting ship and the people who inhabit it. There’s a lot left to the imagination as the author never spells it all out for the reader and this made me eager to keep turning the pages, to attempt to soak it all in and figure it out. I don’t want to say too much about this novella and honestly, I can’t spill out the words without spoiling the things that every reader should discover on their own. If you’re a fan of nightmarish worlds and powerfully strong women who persevere despite the odds, and a killer ending this is one you’ll want to add to your reading pile.

CW: mention of miscarriages

Laurie is a long-time horror fan, book reviewer and a co-founder of Ladies of Horror Fiction. You can find Laurie on her blog Bark’s Book Nonsense, on Twitter as @barksbooks, on Instagram as @barksbooks, and on Goodreads. 

As part of our Pride Month celebrations, we asked those submitting guest posts to provide a link to a charity of their choice. Laurie chose LGBTQ mental health and suicide prevention | AFSP and we would ask, if you are able, if you could please consider a donation to support their work.