Spelbound

gardenspells

I am charmed by Sarah Addison Allen’s books. They are beautifully written and I couldn’t wait to share them with you. If reading for you is about escaping into a different reality just for a little while, you will enjoy them. In her work she stamps on a solid ground and touches the supernatural at the same time, with the latter so subtle that if one is not careful enough, they may miss it sometimes.

If you want a taste of the aforementioned magical feeling she brings, you are invited to the moonlit garden that Claire, in “Garden Spells” by Sarah Addison Allen, tends to during her sleepless nights. The garden seems to have a life of its own. Plants just appear and blossom overnight, the temperamental apple tree, the heart of the garden as it seems, bears fruit regardless of the season. Claire learned how to listen to the garden, she knew that ‘’Something was about to happen, something the garden wasn’t ready to tell her yet.”

Claire is content with her life, with the catering business she runs, where she uses her own produce made from herbs and plants. But it’s not all about fragrant gardens, stargazing and sunny days throughout, not for her sister Sydney anyway. Claire lives peacefully in an inherited Waverley family home but her troubled sister has been gone for a decade. Sydney, so used to playing with fire, has drifted onto a dark path that she is now desparated to escape. In a search for a safe place, she is determined to bring her daughter Bay, of whose existence Claire didn’t even know, to the Waverley house – or perhabs she is being led to it by the various fragrances of the garden.

Magic in S. A. Allen’s books is perhabs not as unearthy as it may sound to you right now. Don’t we all sometimes get that unsettling feeling or experience a strange chill? Maybe this is part of us all, maybe the Weverleys women are just more tuned to it. Their unusual abilities haven’t been left unnoticed by their neigbours, eager to purchase the gourmet produce Claire makes out of the herbs and plants she grows, for their various properities.

Both sisters feel betrayed by their mother who left them early in their childchood at their grandmother’s care. Claire is full of regrets as to the way she has treated Sydney when they were kids, although isn’t the sisterly rivarly just a part of the siblings dinamics? At the same time she feels anger towards Sydney for abandoning her family home. Sydney wanted to cut herself free from all the quirks that being a Weverley meant, all that Claire has been cherishing, but now the family home is her only safe place. Will the sisters recocile?

Witty, humorous, insightful. I will gladly award this book 4 stars, bookmarks or bicycles.