It's 2025. Sisters, Doris and Thea, exist worlds apart, despite living within a few miles of one another. Doris with her regular home and regular husband and regular job, and Thea slinking along the edges of society, solitary and invisible.
As the rain continues and the waters rise, each attempt to survive both the flood and each other while also resisting the strange pull of the monstrous, Leviathan-like creatures that have appeared to haunt the depths of the water beneath them.
One year later, Thea—now calling herself Sestra, the Slavic word for sister—floats throughout a ravaged, flood-soaked world. Her former life drowned beneath metric tons of water, she and her only companion, Robert, battle starvation, heat stroke, and the monstrous creatures called Posies that appeared alongside the flood. When they run across what they assume to be an abandoned tugboat, their journey takes a new turn, and the truth about the flood and the monsters seems more intricately linked to Thea's past then she may realize.
A Flood of Posies was a strange mishmash of dysfunctional family relationships, a flooded world, and sea monsters. Told through a variety of flashbacks and intertwining timelines, Meuret tells us of Doris and Thea, sisters with a pernicious relationship. Thea is an addict, constantly seeking for her next hit. She doesn't care about anything else really than where her next fix will come from. She's on her way to Doris' house to ask her for money when the world changes. A flood suddenly rises out of nowhere and drowns the world. Those who survive are left clinging to anything that floats, hoping to find a way in this watery new world.
Those sea monsters invaded the last refuge of the survivor—their minds, their hope, their willpower. They took those last few things people assumed to be their biological and philosophical rights and left them barren.
Doris is cast as the proper sister, doing what is anticipated of her, marrying well, and creating the life that her mother thinks a respectable woman should have. All because "it made sense". Of course, this is a huge bone of contention between the two. So much that they each struggle to overcome their pasts, even as the world overflows. The characters are remarkably one-sided. I wanted them to be more than they were. Doris remained the stodgy, disapproving sister and Thea was, even after a year in this new water world, focused on the heroin she couldn't have.
One answer that I'm not fully convinced of the answer is this: Is the flood real? Either the world is fully engulfed and there truly are Leviathan-like creatures (or Posies, short for Poseidons) luring those left above into the watery depths OR it's all a heroin-induced nightmare contained in Thea's drug-addled brain. Even the ending, while borderline sappy, didn't help me decide.
A Flood of Posies, besides that hauntingly beautiful cover, was mesmerizing in the cadence of the writing. There were some beautifully written descriptions and passages that spoke to me. Her prose is absolutely lovely and was a joy to experience. Tiffany Mueret completely drew me in with this story of sisterly adversary, affection, and the illusions of addiction.
