First Frost

First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sarah Addison Allen's book, Garden Spells, is one of my all-time favorite novels, so when I had an opportunity to win a free Advanced Reader's Copy (ARC) of First Frost from Bookbrowse in exchange for my honest review, I jumped at the chance.  First Frost picks up the story of the Waverley women of Bascom, North Carolina, ten years after the end of Garden Spells.  Bay is now fifteen, her mother is happily married to Henry, and her Aunt Claire is happily married to Tyler.  Claire and Tyler live in the Waverley house with their nine-year-old daughter Mariah, while Sydney, Henry, and Bay live in Henry's farmhouse.  Evanelle isn't moving as quickly as she used to, but she still feels the urge to give people unusual objects they'll soon need, and her best friend and housemate, Fred, has begun to do the same.

The tension in First Frost, thankfully, isn't due to stress in the marriages--I absolutely hate when sequels ruin love stories just to provide plot points.  Rather, each of the Waverley women is struggling with a different issue in her personal life: Claire has been doing virtually nothing but making special candies for the past year and feels trapped and exhausted by it, Sydney desperately wants another baby but hasn't been able to conceive, Evanelle is facing fading health and a friend who cannot bear the thought of losing her, and Bay, well, Bay knows where things belong and is tormented when others can't see it, in this case a boy she knows she's meant to be with who barely knew she existed until she wrote him a note that gained her some unwanted notoriety.  A mysterious stranger asking the townspeople questions about the Waverleys in general and Claire in particular just adds to the anxiety and tension.   They all know things will get better, as they always do, after the first frost of the year when the apple tree in the backyard blooms.  The trick is to hang on until then.

I loved being able to revisit the enchanting world of Bascom.  The story is delightful--perfect for a cozy fall or winter evening.   I didn't want to put it down.

What I did want, however, is for the mysterious stranger subplot to have been better developed.  I felt like it started to go in an interesting, magical direction and then sort of fizzled out by the end.  Otherwise, though, I loved spending time with these characters and this story.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, setting secondary.  It's a lovely story about family supporting and nurturing each other.  There is no sex (well, mention of it as Sydney focuses on conception but not any real sex scenes), violence, or swearing that I can recall.

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Garden Spells

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So far as I can tell, this has been my most popular review on Goodreads.  Since I'm behind in writing my reviews, I decided to post this older (2007) one here in the meantime.  Enjoy!


What I learned from this book is...if an apple tree throws its apples at you, for goodness sake, pay attention already!

This book is lovely, magical, enchanting. I sat down to read just one chapter, basically to decide whether it was worth holding onto even though it was already overdue. At 2:30 a.m. I finished the whole darn thing. Couldn't stop myself. I floated in a state of suspended reality, where time had no meaning.

The basic idea of the book: two sisters experienced their childhoods very differently. Now, as adults, they must come to terms with choices, past and present, and with the unique abilities each woman inherited. In Bascom, North Carolina, townsfolk know Claire's garden grows produce with mystical properties, like the honeysuckle wine she makes that lets you see in the dark. Sydney has a gift for revealing a person's inner self through a haircut. Bay always knows where things belong. And whatever Evanelle gives you, no matter how strange, you'll be certain to need before too long.

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The Peach Keeper

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Peach Keeper is a delightful story of friendship and finding yourself. Living your best life, as Oprah would say. Seventy-five years ago a secret was buried at the edge of a cliff, but secrets do not stay buried forever, and this one is shaken loose when Paxton and Colin restore the town's original grand home to its former glory. Willa, Paxton, Sebastian, and Colin grew up in the same North Carolina town but worlds apart. The labels they bore in high school--Joker, Princess, Freak, and Stick Man--still haunt them twelve years later. They are about to learn that none of them is quite what people thought.

Sarah Addison Allen infuses her books with magic. Not the spells and incantations sort, but the delicious kind--bells and scents and objects that appear and disappear, protective birds, earthquakes, and so on. I read this book pretty much in one sitting and wished I could dive into it and meet these people in real life. I also loved the cameo appearance by Claire and Bay from Garden Spells.

For readers' advisors: character doorway primarily but also story doorway



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The Girl Who Chased the Moon

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen


My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this one in a single evening. It was an enjoyable read, but it didn't captivate me the way Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen did. I thought Allen tried a little too hard to have the characters' back-stories remain mysterious secrets, and that stifled character (and plot) development. I kept wanting them to just spill the beans so they could deal with the past and finally heal & move on with their lives.

The premise of the book is that 17-year-old Emily comes to Mullaby, NC, to live with her "gentle giant" of a grandfather after her mother's death. She knew her mother as a tireless social activist, but the town remembers Dulcie quite differently, only no one will tell Emily why. Meanwhile, the next door neighbor has a secret of her own, which relates to why she bakes cakes with the windows open, and why she can't wait to sell her (father's) restaurant and leave town again. And then there is the mayor's family with the teenage son, Win, who is drawn to Emily, despite his family's animosity toward her.

Win sneaking into Emily's room at night to watch her sleep was just a little too Twilight for me, though. (I loved Twilight, but a teenage boy who sneaks in "just" to watch a teenage girl sleep is creepy and not very believable.)

For Reader's Advisory: character and story doorways

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The Sugar Queen

The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me a little longer to really get into The Sugar Queen than it did Garden Spells, but once I did, I loved it.

This novel falls into the category I believe is called "magical realism." How can you not love a story where books follow one of the characters around?! Books on whatever topic is appropriate to her life appear out of thin air wherever she happens to be. Ha!

At first I had to remind myself that the connections between some of the characters were supposed to be Magic. (I kept wanting to send the women to a PAX workshop...or 4.) But once my brain finally accepted it, that was when the story really started to flow & when I really got interested in piecing together the clues of what was REALLY happening with some of the characters--who people were and what happened with them in the past.

It's a lovely book. A bit poignant at times. Bad parenting is...so...ARGH!! But all's well that ends well, I guess.

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