Book one-sixty-eight: Garden Spells

Garden Spells (2007)
Sarah Addison Allen

Rating: 3/5

Flawed, yet compelling and quite magical.

It’s interesting. I can actually see some Suzan Elizabeth Phillips in the plot (the whole ex-boyfriend from high school and his wife and their dramas is straight out of Ain’t She Sweet, but with some magic thrown in for good measure). And some of the dialogue feels quite Jenny Cruise-ish… especially the things left unsaid (and un-thought) in conversation element.

But overall it is good and highly read-able. I look forward to reading something else by Allen. I think this was her first novel.

Such a nice cover, too.

Welcome to Bascom, North Carolina, where everyone has a story to tell about the Waverley women. The old house that’s been in the family for generations, the walled garden that mysteriously blooms year round, the rumors and innuendoes of dangerous loves and tragic passions. Eccentric, reclusive, or renegade, there’s not one that wasn’t somehow touched by magic.

As the town’s successful caterer, Claire has always clung closely to the Waverleys’ roots in their enchanted soil, tending the family garden from which she makes her much sought-after delicacies. She has everything she thinks she needs – until one day she finds a vine of ivy creeping into her garden and knows that everything is about to change.

Then her prodigal sister Sydney arrives with her five-year-old daughter and a dark secret she hopes to keep well hidden. And suddenly Claire’s carefully tended life is about to run gloriously out of control …

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Finished: Sunday 16/9