Wildflower Hill: Book Review

My cousin gave me the book Wildflower Hill by Kimberley Freeman, that she had won on Goodreads several months ago. I didn't read the book until a couple of weeks ago because I was hesitant; I wasn't sure that I'd enjoy a book that was set in London and Australia, half narrated many, many years before I was even born. I couldn't have been more wrong, and I'm so glad I took a chance and read the book.

Synopsis According to Barnes&Noble:

SPANNING THREE GENERATIONS AND HALF THE WORLD, WILDFLOWER HILL IS A SWEEPING, ROMANTIC, AND COMPELLING STORY OF TWO WOMEN WHO SHARE A LEGACY OF SECRETS, HEARTBREAK, COURAGE, AND LOVE.

Emma, a prima ballerina in London, is at a crossroads after an injured knee ruins her career. Forced to rest and take stock of her life, she finds that she’s mistaken fame and achievement for love and fulfillment. Returning home to Australia, she learns of her grandmother Beattie’s death and a strange inheritance: a sheep station in isolated rural Australia. Certain she has been saddled with an irritating burden, Emma prepares to leave for Wildflower Hill to sell the estate.

Beattie also found herself at a crossroads as a young woman, but she was pregnant and unwed. She eventually found success—but only after following an unconventional path that was often dangerous and heartbreaking. Beattie knew the lessons she learned in life would be important to Emma one day, and she wanted to make sure Emma’s heart remained open to love, no matter what life brought. She knew the magic of the Australian wilderness would show Emma the way.

Wildflower Hill is a compelling, atmospheric, and romantic novel about taking risks, starting again, and believing in yourself. It’s about finding out what you really want and discovering that the answer might be not at all what you’d expect.

My Review:

Wildflower Hill truly has it all - racism/discrimination, generational differences, war, love, hate, marriage, divorce, cheating, kidnapping, and eventually death. And to think this is what almost stopped me from even reading the book. One would think all of these themes would be unable to fit together in one book, but Freeman does it quite wonderfully. Every few chapters she changes the narrator, so the reader gets a chance to see both Bettie's story all those years ago, and then Emma's story after Bettie, her grandmother, has passed away. I honestly loved the first few pages when young, 11 year old Emma and Bettie are together, and Bettie tells her that she has something for her, but only when she is done being a Ballerina, something that Emma thinks she will never be done with. Seeing the characters together was a great way to start off the book, that only connects the characters throughout the rest of the story using the themes I have described above. 

We find Bettie unwed, and yet pregnant - losing everything within chapters, from her job and friends to her family and the baby's father, Henry. He wants nothing to do with her because he is married and cannot leave his wife, that is until Bettie leaves and lives in a home where unwed mothers give up their babies for adoption. They run off together to Australia, but Henry is always leaving her and the baby, Lucy, on their own to drink and gamble. He's an abusive, alcoholic, but he loves his daughter more than anything. After 4 years, Bettie is done with the abuse, and she has reason to believe that Henry and Molly, Henry's wife, will take Lucy and run away together. So instead of giving him the chance, she takes Lucy and goes to Lewinford to work as a seamstress. She also gets a job at Wildflower Hill, a rather promiscuous farm, serving food and drinks to guests. I look up to Bettie because she has such strong willpower, to do whatever she can for her daughter Lucy, even when Lucy sadly isn't in the picture anymore. I don't think any reader could have predicted what would happen to Beattie, because it seemed as if she just couldn't get a break. 

With Emma, however, it's a different story, she's 32 and has no dreams of being a mother or having a family, and eventually her boyfriend leaves her because she is so wrapped up in ballet, that there is no room for anything else. She's a dancer, through and through, that is until she falls and tears ligaments in her knee, forcing her to move back to Australia with her mom, discovering her grandmother's gift to her, which she was to receive only after she had retired from dancing. She wasn't ready to retire, but now she is forced to. Emma begins to find things out at Wildflower Hill about her grandmother's past, and eventually about her own future. 

This is a powerful story, one that makes me hope that everyone has a happy ending, even if it's generations later. 

"He seemed to her in that moment as he had always seemed: a stranger right beside her, somebody she knew well but didn't know at all" (page 14).

"Even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day" (page 149).

"But the worst mistake we can make about old people is to forget they were once young" (page 412).

My Rating: 5 Stars