T.L. Garrett’s Garden Quartz & Paper Flowers is a raw and unflinching collection of stories and poems that trace the life of Calla, a girl navigating the deep scars of trauma, abuse, and healing. The book reads like a patchwork of memory. Each chapter a petal torn from her past, revealing a life marked by generational pain, silence, and survival. Garrett writes in a style that blends memoir and fiction, pulling readers into scenes that feel heartbreakingly real. The imagery of flowers, roots, and stones threads through the work, symbolizing growth from ruin and the fragile beauty that comes from endurance.

The writing is heavy with emotion, but there’s a strange softness to it too. A tenderness that lingers even in the ugliest moments. Garrett doesn’t hold back, and it shows. The prose feels like a scream written into poetry. I found myself pausing often, sometimes just to process. There’s a rhythm in her storytelling that’s both jarring and intimate. Her voice feels lived-in, like someone telling a truth they carried for too long. Some passages are uncomfortable to read, not because of how they’re written, but because of how real they are. You can feel the child’s confusion, the teenager’s anger, and the adult’s reckoning all colliding in one soul. It’s unsettling. It’s human.

What struck me most was Garrett’s way of turning pain into purpose. She doesn’t ask for pity. She asks for understanding. The book dives into spiritual themes like healing, intuition, and forgiveness, but never in a way that feels forced. Her honesty feels sacred. I loved how she wove resilience through the narrative like a vine wrapping around broken glass. It’s not a perfect book in a technical sense, but that’s exactly what makes it so powerful. Her writing feels like it’s bleeding onto the page, and yet, there’s beauty in every wound.

Garden Quartz & Paper Flowers isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for readers who have lived through darkness and clawed their way toward light, or for those who want to understand what that fight looks like. It’s for anyone who believes survival itself is an art form. If you want something real, something that cracks you open and reminds you what it means to be alive, this book is worth every page.

Pages: 258 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0FJ4XM2JL