Short, sweet, a little odd, a little uneven, as experimental structures often are. In this case, 28 tasters of honey, with tasting notes and a story based on them.

No story notes, because I read this over a month ago, and I remember very little of the stories, even glancing through. Beautiful writing, and a lovely book for dipping into between chores. ( )

Simply delightful. ( )

What a gorgeous, delicious literary experience. All five senses are on display with this short and tantalizing written experience. There are poems and vignettes woven into these notes on various honeys, and it's simply like nothing I've ever read before. ( )

This is the first of the honeys to have crystallised in the vial; I drew the wand out covered in chunks. Oh, and it is dry and burnished, caramel tones, burnt-sugar tasting and thick, strong; close to buckwheat honey, that distinctive taste, brown. Makes me think of the scent of beeswax, and the darker colours of it, too.
(Day 9 - Zambian Honey)

The introduction explains how this book came about when the author decided to write a piece every day of February, inspired by samples of 28 different honeys, and as I belong to an on-line book club that chose The Honey Month as one of its reads for February and March, I decided to read one of its 28 stories and poems each day during February this year and make notes for my review as I went along. I found the introduction quite off-putting for some reason and think it would work better as an afterword, as it's all about the publisher and the bond she had developed with the author.

All my life I have had no sense of smell, and after the first few days I was having the same issue with The Honey Month that I had when I read the novel Perfume. The emphasis on how each of the honey samples smells and tastes made me feel on edge, and the stories are so slight that there is not enough plot to take my mind off it. But I decided that I could cope with one short chapter a day, so I carried on reading it, as I did enjoy the poem inspired by the Peach Creamed Honey on day 2, with its warning to a girl about the dangers of teasing men.

Half way through the month and the book I had conquered my initial squeamishness. Some of the honeys do sound very nice, but with having no sense of smell, I would be able to tell that they tasted different from each other, but not much more. I certainly wouldn't be able to pick up all the subtle flavours that the author did.

All I know is that I lost a ring to the forest, once, and it was kind enough to give it back.
(Day 15 - Hungarian Forest Honey)

A lot of the stories were too short to have much in the way of plot, and the story with the Cardigan (Day 7 - Thistle Honey) was the highlight of the first half of the book for me, but there were a few others that I liked almost as much. Several of the stories involved bees wiping honey onto people's lips which I found quite off-putting even though I am not anti-bee and am positively fond of bumble bees.

I'm not going to give this book a star-rating, as my feelings about it veer from extremely positive to extremely negative, and a middling rating wouldn't represent how I felt about it at all.