Jane Holden is the youngest in what appears to be the perfect family. She has loving, hard-working parents and her beautiful and talented older sister, Lizzie. Jane often feels as if she's the weak link in her family. In comparison to Lizzie, she's rather plain and boring. Not all is well with Lizzie, though. She suffers from an eating disorder that ultimately leads to her death. Jane soon discovers it was a lot easier to deal with an inferiority complex as a member of a complete family than it is to live every day in a broken one.
Jane In Bloom certainly has some wonderful attributes. The strengthening of Jane's relationship with her father after Lizzie's death is heart-warming. Jane learns that her parents always believed her to be the stronger of their two children. She wasn't as far from their thoughts as she always suspected. And indeed, Lytton hits upon some perfectly tuned phrases. For instance this paragraph before Lizzie's funeral:
"My family is Presbyterian. Not super religious Presbyterian. Just your average go-to church-on-holidays and sometimes when Mom remembers that it's Sunday morning. Not religious enough to give me answers to all this. Just enough to confuse me. Like what kind of God allows a beautiful teenager to die. And why her?"
Out of the mouths of 12-year-old characters and every real person who has lost a loved one. The honesty in that statement was just so potent. I even like how Jane discovers somewhat of a kindred soul in Hunter. It's easy to forget that we are often very young when we lose our first loved one. The downside to this novel, though, is that the imagery is just a bit too heavy-handed. Certainly it is understandable that Jane would search to find something, anything that would occupy this lonely time. And given that she asked for a digital camera for her birthday, photography is a logical choice, but this is where it all becomes forced. I mean her first real assignment is take pictures of roses at each stage of bloom. Should Lytton really expect so little from her readers? Of course, the death of a sibling is bound to change a person profoundly, but I don't think the readers really needed the constant reminder about Jane growing and blooming. Even if I had read this novel at age 11, I think I would have felt as if the flower symbolism was a bit trite and fake. It all felt a bit too soap-opera to me.