Iris and the Aloha Wedding Adventure was downloaded free via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Lynelle Wooley's Flower Girl World is a series of two chapter books for young children, and the theme is exactly what you'd expect from the title. It's about a group of little girls who serve as flower girls in a wedding and decide to form a club for their not-quite-a-hobby. The series is fairly cute and I enjoy the art (it looks like something that would be at home in one of those casual Time Management games, like Diner Dash or Delicious or--more relevant here--Diner Dash's spin-off series, Wedding Dash), though I can't say I'm aware of any demographic of girls particularly interested in the idea of flower girls. I certainly didn't have any such interests when I was that age, though I imagine this series might have changed that, had it been around back in the mid-nineties!
I'm going to say that Rosie and the Wedding Day Rescue, the first book in the series, is definitely the weaker of the two. I picked up my copy for free from Amazon during a promotional period (I keep up with Kindle freebies over at /r/FreeEBOOKS), but I didn't get around to reading it until now. It's short and it's cute, though it's not exactly the most fascinating or logical thing I've ever read.It's really exactly what you'd expect it to be. Three cute little girls (making up your typical white/blonde, white/brunette, and ambiguously brown/brunette trio) are invited to be flower girls at a wedding, and they get to pick out their clothes, deal with insecurity, and solve all the bride's problems along the way. Because of the low page count, though, there isn't much time devoted to any of these issues, and I'd say the "helping the bride" bits suffered the worst for that; but then, I always find these kinds "the kids save the day" plots kind of ridiculous--but I'm sure a kid within the age of the target audience will get a kick out it no matter what I think.
Iris' new friend, Hana, is a mixed-ethnicity girl of Chinese, Japanese, and Hawaiian descent, and her Tutu--her grandmother--introduces the reader to some Hawaiian mythology in the form of the Menehune. It really helped to make the Hawaiian theme seem less like empty trappings thrown on for the sake of exotic flavor and more like actual cultural diversity, and I loved it. Had I read this as a kindergartner, I don't doubt that I would've adored it.
At the moment, the Flower Girl World website has no information about any upcoming books in the series, but if any more do come out, I definitely hope Woolley keeps going in the direction she took with Aloha Wedding Adventure. As for me, if I spot any more FGW books on Netgalley in the future, I'm definitely going to give them a chance. I'd love to see this series go further with the cultural exploration and get into different wedding traditions around the world.
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