The Suicide Flowers by Pete Conrad.

What a way to start a book?...

The vomit seemingly took Gabriel by surprise as he laid his left cheek on the left side of the toilet seat. Half of the retch landed in the toilet, while the remainder skimmed over the right side of the toilet seat and slapped onto the floor. Gabriel was in the final stages of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia.

...So, not a bright start to a book. I read books for pleasure and get a lot of enjoyment from reading novels. The Suicide Flowers has many rave reviews on Goodreads, so I thought I would buy a copy and give it a go.

This novel has two central characters, Gabriel - with his terminal illness and Raeburn - the lead singer of the rock band Aluminum Jesus. Chapters alternate between Gabriel and Raeburn as this novel crawls to it’s death.

What started off as a challenging read for me, turned into a bore. You knew that Gabriel’s days were numbered and I developed no empathy for Raeburn. The story rambled on and on in a way a fan would rant about music from an artist you can’t stand the sound of. I got no pleasure from reading this book and there were no surprises as this story bled to it’s death. The plot progression was very predictable and the issues of coping with a terminal illness were NOT fully exploited.

The Suicide Flowers was a big let down for me, it did not enlighten or entertain me. It had all the hallmarks of a made-for-tv movie, one that you would switch off at the first advert break. But because I bought a copy of this sorry book, I read it to the deadly end. I did not feel any grief or loss at the end but relief that I could move on to a better book in my growing collection. I will NOT be reading ANY of the three other books that Pete Conrad has written and will vote this boring novel that I could not relate to the minimum score of 1 star. This is a book to AVOID in my opinion and if I wanted to hear a fan ramble on and on, then every Tuesday when our granddaughter Leah comes around, I only have to ask her about Justin Bieber and let her enthusiasm wash all over me.

The Suicide Flowers is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook and was written in 2014.