Paper Flowers

Paper Flowers by dream-beautiful

"Sometimes I forget to be careful with you." ... "When you're not careful I forget you hate me." He's difficult, she's quiet. It's hard, this love thing.
Banner Credit: Melissa

Ali Thinks: It would be a crime if I didn't start this off with a thank you. So thank you, dream-beautiful, for writing "Paper Flowers," and more importantly, thank you for suggesting it because let me tell you, my life is a lot better now that I know your story exists.

Let's all just be clear here, I'm not over-exaggerating. Everyone has those stories they can read literally thousands of times and not get tired of them (I swear, it can't just be me) and while I have tons and tons (…and tons) of these stories, I am proud to announce that "Paper Flowers" is now one of those tons.

The first time I read it, I really liked it. I thought it was cute, realistic, and had an odd sort of je ne sais quoi that I really dug. The second time I read it, I became quite miffed that the state of Maryland probably didn't allow marriage to an intangible object. Okay, that was (somewhat of an) overstatement, but it was definitely the second read-through that made me fall in love with it. Every little detail that I saw cleverly hiding about the story made it so much better, knowing that I could track back and see the method to everyone's, namely Ethan's, madness.

Speaking of Ethan… what an exquisitely thought-out, complex, amazing character. Even though it's just three chapters, he was portrayed so well that it felt as though someone somewhere could actually be him and living out his story. In fact, dream-beautiful did a truly exquisite job in bringing the entire story to life, not just Ethan. Rose and Ethan's relationship isn't exactly all sunshine and meadows, and it hasn't been for the past year. When relationships are heading for the worse and not the better, like Rose's and Ethan's is, it's not all drama and yelling all the time in real life, and it was nice to be the same case in Paper Flowers. The situation he and Rose are in is both serious and a difficult one to handle, and the way the two of them go about doing so, I felt, was something that people would actually do, and I really admired that.

God, there are so many good qualities about "Paper Flowers", and I would really like to touch upon all of them, but if I did, this review would be longer than the actual story, which is about 15,000 words. So I'll just leave you with one last thing (if for some strange reason you're still reading this instead of the brilliant story I just raved about): go read it. Go love it. Go read it again. And again.