Book Summary and Reviews of I Have This Thing for Flowers by Alysia Sawchyn

I Have This Thing for Flowers by Alysia Sawchyn

I Have This Thing for Flowers

Essays on the Roots of Relationships

by Alysia Sawchyn

  • Publishes:
  • Aug 4, 2026, 272 pages
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Book Summary

A story of love, marriage, and flowers from beloved writer and gardening enthusiast Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn.

It begins with an ending. Six months before they were to be married, Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn's fiancée broke off their engagement, leaving her stunned and reeling. Looking for stability ― and health insurance ― she married a friend instead. Then, while sharing a home and tending to a garden together, the marriage of convenience turned into a marriage of love.

In science, art, and mythology, we cannot help but to see flowers as metaphors for the fleeting nature of youth, vitality, and love. While it's easy to casually admire something beautiful, it requires a closer look to appreciate the effort that produces that beauty. In I Have This Thing For Flowers, Sawchyn does just that, likening the many flowers she has grown in her garden to a range of relationships and activities from motherhood to ex-boyfriends to Greek mythology.

Cataloguing all of the great romances of her life like an herbarium of flowers preserved from the garden, Sawchyn examines the kinds of love that can't be explained.

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This information about I Have This Thing for Flowers was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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More Information

Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn is a writer, editor, and educator living in Western North Carolina. Formerly the Editor-in-Chief of The Rumpus magazine, she has received fellowships from the Kenyon Review and the Sewanee Writers' Conferences. Their first essay collection, A Fish Growing Lungs, was a finalist for The Believer Book Awards.

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