Story for the Week
What did I learn from my last review of the year? I have always held the belief that we do judge books by their covers (It’s the “Blank” for Me). A great cover is kind of a must to pull me in. When the cover draws me in, I read the blurb. If I like the blurb, I read the book.
That’s really how I choose almost all the books I select by authors who are new to me. And the book reviewed below is no exception. The cover? Stunning. The title? Attention-grabbing. And the blurb made me request it immediately.
It started strong. As I read it, though, I felt myself getting bogged down. The main characters got on my nerves, made stupid decisions, and caused many of their own problems. BUT…and this is a huge but…Dandelion is Dead is the perfect example of why I rarely leave a book unfinished.
Plenty of readers say there are too many options out in the world to continue to read a book that isn’t doing it for you. My philosophy, however, is that sometimes you have to get through slow pieces of the story, through the parts that make you angry, to get to an ending that makes the entire journey worth it. This is one of those books.
When it comes to rating unfinished titles, I use the example of a teacher choosing to give a final grade on a 100-question test based on the first 10 answers. Perhaps the student tests poorly and has to get into a groove. Perhaps they know the later material better than the earlier material. Regardless, it’s unfair to grade only a portion, so I would never rate or review a book I hadn’t read completely.
In a book like this one, I think you have to dislike the main characters a lot. They make horrible decisions. But you want to be able to root for them in the end. And the more I read, I kept thinking about all of the emotions that come from grief like these characters experience.
When my husband passed away a little more than five years ago, I didn’t like my daughter Corinne very much either. (Please, no gasping from the shock of that statement. She is well aware.) She spent an inordinate amount of her grief journey in the Anger stage. I can’t really blame her. We lost him three weeks before her 15th birthday. I would have been angry too.
At the same time, I couldn’t simultaneously handle her grief and mine. I spent an inordinate amount of my grief journey losing my patience. I didn’t know how to handle her anger because I was past the anger and well into the Depression stage. But I felt like I couldn’t let her see that depression. I was emotionally incapable of giving her what she needed, and that weighed on me every single day. (Yeah, grief and guilt make a great combination. 🙄)
I took a four-month leave from work. Every morning for three months, I dropped Corinne off at school and came home to lie in bed until the afternoon. If I needed a good cry, I cried in the shower or outside with our puppy at 3:00 in the morning because I didn’t want to add to her grief. As her mom and her support system, I felt like I had to carry my grief and hers. (And before you ask, yes, therapy did wonders for both of us.)
That year, we bought a Christmas tree from Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve because we felt like we had to do something. Even though we didn’t feel like celebrating, it was Dennis’s favorite holiday. Those were some dark days, and if we were the main characters in someone’s story, we might have been a “did not finish.”
But I’d like to think that we’ve gotten to our 5-star ending.
Holidays can still be tough. Every milestone is a reminder, and we will always miss him. But that sad excuse for a Christmas tree that I bought the first year fits perfectly now. We still keep up many of the traditions we had when he was alive…except for getting up at the butt-crack of dawn on Christmas morning. We are a family of late risers now, and that’s ok. 😉
So what did I learn from my last review of the year? I learned that my process of seeing every story through to the end is the right one for me. I learned that the characters we don’t like in the beginning may be the ones we learn to love in the end. It really is all about the journey.
To those who celebrate…Merry Christmas 🎄, Happy Hannukah 🕎, and the happiest of New Years. 💜
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Dandelion is Dead by Rosie Storey
360 pages
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group | Berkley
Publication Date: January 13, 2026
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group | Berkley.
Publisher’s Description
Jake has fallen head over heels for Dandelion. The only problem? Dandelion is dead.
When Poppy discovers unanswered messages from a charming stranger in her late sister’s dating app, she makes an impulsive choice: She’ll meet him, just once, on what would have been Dandelion’s fortieth birthday. It’s exactly the kind of wild adventure her vivacious sister would have pushed her toward.
Jake is ready to find something real—and not least because his ex-wife’s twenty-something boyfriend has moved into their old family home. When he meets the intriguing woman who calls herself Dandelion, their connection is undeniable, and he can think of little else.
As their relationship deepens, Poppy finds herself trapped in a double life she never meant to create. Every moment with Jake feels genuine, electric, and totally right—despite the fact they’re tangled in deceit. As the lines between grief and love blur, Poppy faces a choice: keep her sister’s memory alive through her lies, or risk everything for a chance at her own happiness?
************
Main Characters:
- Poppy – 37 years old, professional photographer who specializes in high-end events, in a five-year relationship with Sam, still mourning her sister Dandelion’s death seven months before
- Jake – 40 years old, director at an advertising agency, dad to four-year-old Billy, a bit of a player since his divorce from Zoe 15 months before but looking for something more real
- Sam – Poppy’s boyfriend of five years, he and Dandelion never got along, felt that six months was long enough for Poppy to mourn her sister, pushing Poppy to get married and immediately start a family
- Jetta – Dandelion’s best friend; she, Dandelion, and Poppy spent all their time together growing up
- Zoe – Jake’s ex-wife and Billy’s mom, in a relatively new relationship with Yan
- Yan – Zoe’s new (younger) boyfriend, recently moved in with her and Billy, works as a yoga instructor
Trigger warning: sibling death, grief, references to suicide
I did not expect this book. Truth be told, about halfway through, I thought I wouldn’t be giving it a very good review. But this is why I always say I won’t review a book if I haven’t finished it. You can’t really appreciate this story and the character arcs for Poppy and Jake unless you read all the way through to the end.
The timeline is relatively short—April to August—covering from the time seven months after Dandelion died to the one-year anniversary. When the story begins, Poppy drops her phone and breaks it. She stops by Dandelion’s flat to grab her phone until Poppy can buy a new one. When she had first left the phone in the flat, Poppy didn’t have the inclination to view any of the messages. Seven months later, however, she decides to take a peek at her sister’s notes, messages, and apps.
When Poppy comes across Dandelion’s Hinge profile, she realizes that her sister unsurprisingly lied to people a lot. Scrolling through Dandelion’s 173 matches and countless messages, her scrolling happens to stop on Jake, who told Dandelion more than a year before that he could “feel her heat.” She likes the sound of Jake and, on a whim, responds as Dandelion saying that she had been busy with life and now she’s back.
A lot has happened to Jake since he messaged Dandelion originally, and he decides to respond right away and plan a date, which Poppy agrees to…as Dandelion. This sets up the first of many lies and secrets between the two of them since Poppy has a live-in boyfriend, and she is not Dandelion.
For a lot of the book, I didn’t like Poppy (liar) or Jake (kind of cringey and more than a little obsessed with a dead woman). And I really didn’t like Poppy’s boyfriend Sam (misogynistic jerk). But I feel like Poppy deserves some grace while grieving her sister because her boyfriend is a complete 💩. Jake is grieving his marriage and even his mom who he lost when he was a child. And when he inevitably discovers that the Dandelion he finds so enchanting is not actually Dandelion, well you can’t blame him for turning into a bit of a jerk.
Beautifully written, this story overflows with grief and all its ramifications, which makes it messy and chaotic and throws us all over the place. It gets a little bogged down in the middle with Poppy and Jake coming together, falling apart, coming together, falling apart over and over. But when you come out the other side…when both of them are able to come through the darkness in their own lives…both characters are better for it.
This story revolves around love and loss (both family and romantic), working your way out of the darkness that comes with that, and forgiving the people who have wronged us, even those who leave us to fend for ourselves in this world. At one point Poppy’s mother tells her, “The best advice I ever received is to forgive. Regardless of if the other person is sorry. Or whether they’ve apologized, or ever will apologize. Forgiveness is something we must do because our own souls deserve that peace.”
I really appreciated the peace the Poppy reached by the end. It took a lot for her to get there, but that’s what personal growth is about. As much as I disliked Poppy at the start, I really loved the person she became. This is definitely a journey worth taking.
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