I loved waitress-turned-receptionist-turned-successful-you’ll-find-out Corinne. And I loved James, student of the school of hard knocks, climbing his way up and out and free. 

Though I liked the characters and the trajectories Kacie Davis Idol wrote for them, I struggled with some technical aspects of this book:

• I don’t like chapters that alternate narrators, but I can get over it… unless the author also uses flashbacks and flash-forwards. One or the other may have worked. As it stands it’s confusing for the reader. 
• The author took up pages and pages describing things that didn’t move the plot forward: Corinne’s outfits, her sister’s wedding, that night at the bar… If it doesn’t add to character or plot development, it’s not needed. Once I realized the chapters were 80% extraneous, I started to skim over the pages of irrelevant details. 
• The tone for James was inconsistent. Sometimes his chapters made him sound like a sensitive, artistic, loving guy. Other chapters made him seem callous and cold. I’m not sure a man crassly talks about his “kid” one minute and then says he’s in love with the baby a few moments later. 

I think this book has promise. With some paring down of details, reformatting of the order of the chapters, and an editor helping with consistency, The Tulip Factory would have been an enjoyable cute coming-into-her-own story.