Garden Spells

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Two mysteriously gifted sisters deal with abandonment by their mother in very different ways in this novel by Allen (The Girl Who Chased the Moon; The Sugar Queen): Sydney runs far away to find adventure while Claire sticks close to home, unwilling to open up to the world around her. Across the country in Seattle, Washington, Claire's sister Sydney and her five-year-old daughter Bay escape from David, Sydney's abusive boyfriend and Bay's father, and head to Bascom. She's sold millions of copies worldwide and her books have been translated into more than thirty languages. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

Claire has always clung to the Waverleys’ roots, tending the enchanted soil in the family garden from which she makes her sought-after delicacies – famed and feared for their curious effects.

Evanelle entered and followed Claire to the kitchen, where she sat at the kitchen table while Claire made the coffee. The author handled this well – it didn’t feel like she rushed any one aspect of it and there’s still more for her to do to address her wounds from the past. These weren't a part of the Waverley legacy of edible flowers, but sleepless as she often was, Claire had added flowers to the garden to give her something to do at night when she was so wound up that frustration singed the edge of her nightgown and she set tiny fires with her fingertips. Meanwhile, her e She has everything she thinks she needs – until one day she woke to find a stranger has moved in next door and a vine of ivy has crept into her garden… Claire’s carefully tended life is about to run gloriously out of control.

Though Allen's prose can lean toward the pedestrian and the romance subplots feel perfunctory, the blending of horticultural folklore, the supernatural and a big dollop of Southern flavor should find favor with a wide swath of readers. It smelled strongly of lavender and peppermint, like walking into a Christmas memory that didn't belong to her.But, instead of the main female character using chocolate to weave magic spells for the people that came to her looking for some kind of solace in their life, here Claire makes use of the continually flowering plants from her garden.

and taller than expected – and lavender firelds near my favorite hotel in the world in Avignon,) all sweet to remember…. New York Times bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Sarah grew up with a love of books and an appreciation of good food (she credits her journalist father for the former and her mother, a fabulous cook, for the latter).Picking up the clippers and the trowel from the ground beside her, she stood stiffly and walked in the dawning fog toward the shed. They come from Bascom, North Carolina, where everybody knows that the Waverley women have something about them. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

Tyler is the handsome man next door who has fallen for Claire and seems completely immune to her cooking. Claire has never let go of her connection to family and lives alone in the old Waverley home, running a successful catering company and using ingredients from her magical garden. It was just what I needed – I finished it in the one sitting, in the sun in my favourite winter reading spot.Sitting at his father's old desk, he had invoices in front of him, but judging by the way he jumped when Claire opened the door, his mind had been on other things. It’s refreshing to find a Southern novel that doesn’t depend on folksy humor or stereotypes but instead on the imaginative use of magical realism.