#CBR7 Book 14: "First Frost" by Sarah Addison Allen

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer! St. Martin's Press gave me an ARC of this through NetGalley in return for a fair and honest review.

Ten years have passed since the events of Garden Spells. Claire Waverly has put her catering business on hold and branched out with boiled candy. The lemon verbena can soothe any throat or heartache, the rose candies can make you recall lost love and the lavender makes you calm and happy. After a feature article in a high-profile magazine made demand for her candy explode, Claire has had to hire in external help, as well as purchasing ready-made essences as the production needs far more than she can make from her own garden. While she used to love cooking and baking for her family, now she serves them take out, and she barely has time for her husband and daughter. Always uncertain about how deserving she was of the Waverley legacy, she keeps searching for answers in her grandmother's old journals and trying to figure out how she's going to manage her future. 

Her sister Sidney is happily married and running her own salon, wildly popular, because a haircut from Sidney Waverley is not only extremely flattering, but seems to bring luck and success. Yet Sidney is longing for a baby, a son for her husband Henry, who can help him run the farm, like he used to help his now dead grandfather. She puts up with the extreme unreliability of the newly hired receptionist Violet because with Violet in the salon, she more often than not tends to bring her toddler, Charlie, and if Sidney can't have a child of her own, at least she can spoil this scatter-brained young woman's when she has opportunity.

Sidney's daughter Bey, now in high school, has always known exactly where things belong. She could go into a completely new house and help put away dishes or bed linens, which tends to scare people as often as it impresses them. She knows, with every fibre of her being, that she belongs right there in Bascom, North Carolina, in the Waverley house, and that Josh Matteson, youngest son of her mother's high school sweetheart belongs with her. She foolishly wrote him a note to this effect some months ago, which has made her the laughing stock of her school, but she knows that if she patiently waits, he will realise the truth soon enough. While she waits, she helps her aunt Claire make sweets and hopes her mother will stop nagging her about the identity of the boy she likes.

It's October, and the Waverley women, as well as their men, are awaiting the first frost of the season, when the peculiar apple tree in the back garden will blossom. The weeks before this event always leads to some kind of craziness, and this year there is a mysterious stranger in town, with ties to Claire and Sidney's mother and stories to tell that could change all their lives forever.

I re-read Garden Spells for the first time in four years before I read this book, to remind myself of the story of the Waverley sisters. I don't doubt that you could read First Frost without having read the former, but as it's probably my favourite of all of Sarah Addison Allen's excellent and magical books, I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to. This book will be so much more satisfying if you have the back story of the characters, and it's a lovely book. So if you haven't already, go read it first. This book can wait until you're done.

I must admit, I was a bit worried when I heard this was a sequel. The first book ended on such a hopeful and happy note, and sequels rarely involve only sunshine and puppies for the characters. The blurb suggested that all was not right with the Waverley women who I'd come to love, and I was deeply concerned that this book was going to mess things up badly. Of course, I shouldn't have been. While both sisters are less than happy at the start of First Frost, and there are events in the book that could spell further misery and disaster, the strong relationship that has formed between the two women, not to mention the support of their families and friends is powerful enough that no external threat can faze them for long. Sarah Addison Allen, for all that she tackles dark themes in her books on occasion, is ultimately about the happy ending, and I'm sorry if you feel that I'm spoiling when I say by the end of this book I had a goofy grin on my face.

As well as showing us what has happened with the Waverley sisters and their families in the ten years since the last book, First Frost also sheds further light on their grandmother Mary and their unfortunate mother Lorelei. This book will be a very satisfying read for anyone who has enjoyed Sarah Addison Allen's previous books. She's a writer whose characters I want to be friends with and she writes places I wish were real, so I could visit or even live in them.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR6 Book 52: "Lost Lake" by Sarah Addison Allen. Also, CANNONBALL!

Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer! I got a free ARC of this through NetGalley. I have not been promised anything in return for this review, although if people wanted to start bribing me to read their books, that would be ok too.

Kate Pheris has been a widow for a year, and has been sleep-walking through her life since her husband Matt died. Now her house has been sold, her and her daughter's things are all packed and they're all set to move in with her mother-in-law, who has all sorts of plans for how they're going to get everything sorted out. Yet finally emerging from her grief, Kate realises that she doesn't want to live with her mother-in-law, and she doesn't want her daughter Devin to go to private school, forced to wear a school uniform and stifle her natural creativity. Having never really had to manage on her own, she's not sure what she will do, but she's sure that just settling for her mother-in-law's plans are not it. When Devin finds an old postcard in a trunk in the attic, Kate is reminded of her great-aunt Eby and her holiday cottages at Lost Lake. Kate spent a few weeks there when she was twelve, and as she has only fond memories from the place, she packs up Devin and they go off to see if Eby is still there.

Eby Pim is still at Lost Lake, but has at long last decided that she's going to sell her land and the holiday cottages to a pushy developer, as she is old and dreams of travelling back to Europe, where she and her husband George spent their honeymoon in the early 1960s. Apart from a few elderly regulars, no one ever comes to Lost Lake anymore, and the struggle to keep the place running is becoming too much for Eby. Apparently Eby was the exception in a long line of beautiful Morris women who were all beautiful, with striking green eyes, but who tended to marry unwisely, and were incapable of managing money, so always had to grasp for more. Everyone thought that the gorgeous Marilee, Eby's younger sister, would catch herself a wealthy husband, but she fell in love with a gas station attendant. Instead Eby found the rich suitor, when the boy she'd loved for most of her life came into an unexpected fortune, and proposed to her. Trying to escape her greedy relatives, Eby and George want to spend as much time alone in Europe as possible, but have to return when Marilee is left widowed with a young daughter. Surprising everyone, Eby and George give all of their money away to worthy causes, after settling Eby's mother and sister in comfort, and buying the property at Lost Lake.

Having determined to sell, Eby sends word to the few of the regulars who still visit the camp, but they insist on coming to visit anyway. Selma, Buladeen and Jack can't resist a final visit to the place they've spent every summer for so long. Jack is hoping to finally confess his love to Lisette, the French cook who has lived with Eby for most of her life. While on their honeymoon, Eby and George came across then sixteen year old Lisette, jumping from a bridge after Luc, the boy she rejected hanged himself. Horrified by her actions, Lisette was determined to take her own life, but was rescued by Eby, and decided to stay with her ever since. Born without a voice box, she communicates through written notes, that she burns after she shows them to people. Lisette is haunted by the ghost of Luc, who sits on a chair in her kitchen. She knows why Jack returns every summer, but is terrified that she will break his heart the way she once broke the teenage boy's.

Wes Patterson, who owns the land adjoining Eby's at Lost Lake, is resigned to selling to his uncle once Eby gives in. The only really happy time he spent at the place were the two weeks when Kate visited that summer long ago, and they spent pretty much every waking hour together, with Wes' younger brother Billy trailing after them. Wes' father was a drunk who beat the boys and mistreated them, only Eby and George really showed them any affection. When his father and Billy died in a fire that burned their home to the ground, shortly after Kate left, Wes went to live with a foster mother. He's never been able to forget that summer, or Kate, and is shocked to see her again after so long.

Devin loves it at Lost Lake, and despite the place being run-down, Kate feels at peace there too. Once the townspeople realise that Eby is serious about selling the place, they decide to show her just how important she and the camp have been to all of them, and perhaps they can manage to change her mind about selling. Buladeen, one of the holiday regulars is certainly determined to change Eby's mind. A retired English teacher from a wretchedly poor background, who's always been a voracious reader since she was taught to read, she's fully aware that not all endings are happy. She also knows that plots don't always take the most predictable turns, and that it's important to work to succeed in your hopes and dreams. She comes every summer with Selma, another elderly woman with barely any female friends. The daughter of an unfaithful man, Selma was given eight magic charms by one of her father's mistresses. With these charms, she can lure unhappily married men away from their wives and make them fall madly in love with her. As a result, most women tend to dislike her, and none of her marriages have lasted more than five years. Now she only has one charm left, which she's saving for something big. She claims she doesn't like Lost Lake, or understands why Buladeen insists on claiming that they're friends, but she returns every year, nonetheless.

I'm a huge fan of Sarah Addison Allen's earlier books, my particular favourites being Garden Spells and The Peach Keeper. Reading the acknowledgements for this book, I realised that the reason there was such a gap between The Peach Keeper and this coming out, is because the author has been struggling with breast cancer. I didn't know that when I picked this book as my fifty-second book, and the one I completed my first Cannonball with, but now I'm so glad I did, because it's extra appropriate. Cancer is a horrible disease, and I'm so glad that I can help collect money to fight it by reading books that I love and blogging about them for others.

As in Allen's previous books, family ties are strong in this one, as are those of friendship. There are absolutely magical realism elements, such as Lisette's ghostly reminder, the alligator who only Devin seems able to see and who sends her on a quest and Selma's love charms. Yet the main focus of the book is love and friendship and how different people deal with losing their loved ones, and to what degree they pick themselves back up again and carry on. It's clear that most of the women in Kate and Eby's family love fiercely and passionately, but fall apart completely once their love dies, to the detriment of the next generation. Eby never had children, and was lucky enough to have friends and Lost Lake to help her through her grief. Kate is nearly unmade by her grief, but manages to surface and fight to secure a chance of future happiness for Devin and herself. I was so happy when I was granted the ARC for this, and then I forgot it for a bit again. I'm so glad I finally got the chance to read it, and will absolutely buy it, so I can own it like I do all of Allen's other books.

And with this, I complete my first Cannonball of 2014! Whohoo!

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR3 Book 28: "The Peach Keeper" by Sarah Addison Allen

Publisher: Bantam
Page count: 288 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: April 10th, 2011
Date finished: April 10th, 2011

Paxton Osgood and Willa Jackson used to go to high school together. Paxton was the prom queen, the head cheerleader, the princess; Willa was overlooked by everyone and got her thrills as the school's mysterious practical joker, not revealing her identity until close to graduation. Colin, Paxton's twin, your typical high school jock, was the one who got the credit for all of Willa's pranks, and admired her immensely for it, using her as his inspiration to break free of his parents' expectations and leave the little town of Wells of Water, North Carolina. Paxton stayed, slightly smothered by her mother's plans for her, running the wealthy family's many charitable endeavours and dreaming of moving into a house of her own. Willa's rebellious youth got her into heavy debt in college, and she returned to Wells of Water upon the death of her father, determined that she get her life back on track and live a quiet life of routine and hard work.

The lives of Willa and the Osgood siblings have barely touched since high school, but when the Osgood family buy the Blue Ridge Madam, a huge mansion once owned by the Jackson family before they became empoverished in the 1930s, and Paxton and Colin start restoring it, several ghosts from the past come to the surface, and truths that have been long buried will out.

Once the secrets start unraveling, Paxton and Willa have no choice but to try to figure out the truth, and Paxton's fierce, old grandmother may be able to help them. Best friends with Willa's grandmother around the time that the Jackson family lost all their money and was forced to abandon the Madam, she can tell them things that Willa's grandmother, a stroke victim, can't. In their quest to figure out the past, Paxton and Willa grow closer as well, and discover that despite their different upbringings, they may have more in common than they previously realized.


The Peach Keeper is Addison Allen's fourth novel, and as always, it's a delight to read. As in her other books, there is romance, and characters finding their happily ever afters in the end, but the driving force in this book is friendship - lifelong friendships, supporting each other and keeping each other's secrets. Paxton may have been popular in high school, but feels desperately alone, only really close to the former "freak" and outcast Sebastian, now returned to town as a snappily dressed dentist. Willa keeps to herself most of the time, despite the efforts of her younger shop assistants to make her socialize. When Colin returns to town to landscape the gardens around the Blue Ridge Madam, she resists his advances at first, but can't resist in the end.

By now, Sarah Addison Allen is an automatic buy for me, as I have yet to be even a little disappointed by one of her books. This one was possibly my favourite since her debut, Garden Spells. I will be eagerly awaiting her next novel, and hope she continues to write as magically and entertainingly as she does now.

CBR2 Book 69: "The Girl Who Chased the Moon" by Sarah Addison Allen

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Page count: 304 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: July 19th, 2010
Date finished: July 20th, 2010


Emily Benedict is 17, and comes to Mullaby, North Carolina to live with her grandfather after she is orphaned after the death of her mother, Dulcie. Her mother left Mullaby long ago, and has never told Emily anything about her past. While Emily knows Dulcie as a woman who founded schools, worked for human rights and every worthy social cause imaginable, in Mullaby it seems like everyone pretty much loathed her, and not everyone is happy to see the former prom queen's daughter settle in town.

Someone who does not hold the sins of the mother against the daughter, is Julia Winterson, who was bullied by Dulcie, and who had a pretty hard time growing out as an outcast in Mullaby. She has both internal and external scars to show for it. Now she is trying to pay off the mortgage on her father's barbecue restaurant, and is counting the months until she can sell the restaurant at a profit, take the money and leave town - to set up a bakery and forget all about Mullaby and her past. She tries to welcome Emily and take good care of her, as she knows others in town will not be as nice.

On her first day in town, Emily has a panic attack and is saved by a kind, young man named Win Coffey, but it quickly becomes apparent that neither her grandfather nor his father want them to have anything to do with each other, due to something that happened with her mother and his uncle in the past. Sleeping in a bedroom where the wallpaper changes depending on her mood, and puzzled by the glowing lights in the woods around her grandfather's house, Emily is determined to at least solve the mystery of what happened between her mother and Logan Coffey.

Julia has several painful issues to get over from her past in Mullaby, and bakes amazing cakes and pastries as a form of therapy. When the man she loved passionately as a teenager seems determined to charm his way back into her life, she is confused and troubled and does not know how to handle the situation.

The Girl who Chased the Moon is the third book by Sarah Addison Allen I've read and reviewed for my blog. All her books have certain similarities. They are set in small American towns, feature one or several female characters, a quirky supporting cast, magical realism, and some romance. All her books are easy, comfortable reads, but none have been quite as magical and delightful as her first one, Garden Spells. Still, well worth a read.

CBR2 Book 37: "The Sugar Queen" by Sarah Addison Allen

Publisher: Hodder
Page count: 352 pages
Rating: 4 stars
Date begun: March 19th, 2010
Date finished: March 20th, 2010

Everyone in Josie Cirillo's little North Carolina home town knows her. After all, Josie's father, Marco Cirillo is the man who turned the sleepy little town into a popular winter resort, securing his own and all of the residents' economies. Most also remember her as a willful, extremely badly behaved child, and everyone seems to have a story about something little Josie did. Now 27, Josie is determined to never give her mother a reason to be disappointed in her again. She works so hard to please her mother that she never does anything for herself, and barely leaves the house if it's not to drive her mother somewhere or run her errands.

Then one day she finds local waitress Della Lee Baker hidden in her bedroom closet. She tries to get her to leave, desperately worried that her mother or their maid Helena will find her, or even worse, her secret stash of sweets and romance novels. Josie loves food and eating, but her mother never lets her forget that she is plump, and will look cheap if she dresses in red or wears make-up. Della Lee blackmails Josie into making her stay, and soon has Josie's life changing for the better.

Chloe Finley has just found out that her boyfriend, Jake, whom she loves passionately, cheated on her three months earlier. She's kicked them out of his flat, where they live, and is wondering how she will ever get on with her life without him. All her life, books have magically appeared to Chloe as she needs them. Tucked away in a storage unit she has hundreds of boxes full of books and the furniture she inherited from her grandparents, who raised her. Now she's stuck in a flat her boyfriend owns, surrounded by his things, and whether she wants them or not, self-help books on forgiving and keeping your man keep turning up around her. She can hide them or throw them away, but they return nonetheless, trying to make her forgive and forget.

Josie comes into her sandwich shop three days in a row, buying sandwiches requested by Della Lee (that she never ends up eating, leaving Josie to enjoy them instead), and the two women soon become close friends. Jake happens to be best friends with Adam, the mailman Josie has loved secretly since he started delivering their mail three years earlier. He's never really noticed Josie, until Chloe brings her to his attention, and Josie keeps turning up to keep the heart-broken Chloe out of trouble.

The Sugar Queen is the second of Sarah Addison Allen's books that I have read (and reviewed here on this blog). She is definitely an author I'm going to keep an eye on. While both had darker undertones and delighted me more, this novel was thoroughly entertaining. I wish more than anything in the world ever that I could have the same magical gift as Chloe. I would never have to buy another book in my life. There is nothing as sinister as domestic abuse in The Sugar Queen, but Josie has not had an easy life, and silently suffers under her mother's constant control and disapproval. She yearns to escape the little town where everyone knows her, and only Della Lee, and then Chloe sees the true her.

There is magical realism and supernatural elements in this novel, as well as various romantic subplots. Chloe had passionate love, and is now afraid it has been destroyed because of Jake's betrayal. Josie has always hungered for her mother's love and approval, and has loved Adam in secret for years, only ever seeing him for a minute every day when he delivers the mail. Margaret, Josie's mother, was married to the richest man in town, but was denied true love of her own. Della Lee loved the wrong man, and tries to make sure Josie doesn't pick a bad apple like she did. It was a lovely book, and I will be buying Allen's next novel as soon as it's out in paperback.

CBR2 Book 13: "Garden Spells" by Sarah Addison Allen

Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks
Page count: 327 pages
Rating: 5 stars
Date begun: December 16th, 2009
Date finished: December 17th, 2009

Everyone in Bascom, North Carolina, knows there is something special about the Waverley women. The flowers in their walled garden blossom all year round, and if you eat an apple from the tree that grows there, you will see the biggest event of your life (this event could be good, or it could be hauntingly bad). Claire Waverley has lived alone in the big Waverley house since her grandmother died years earlier, shortly after her little sister Sidney ran off to New York. Claire runs a catering business specializing in edible flowers from her unique garden, and is much sought-after because of the little touch of magic the dishes contain. Claire's life of routine and predictability is suddenly turned on its head when in short order, a handsome stranger moves in next door, ivy creeps into her garden - and Sidney, with her five-year-old daughter Bey in tow - turns up on her doorstep with nowhere to go.

Sidney never enjoyed her legacy as one of the special Waverley women, and like her mother, never really felt she belonged in Bascom. Despite always being able to tell who a person truly is by the way they wear their hair, Sidney does not feel she has any of her family's abilities, and like her mother before her, tried to run away from the little town. She became trapped in a brutal and abusive relationship, where the only good thing she gained was her little girl. After several years of terror and abuse, she finally manages to flee her monstrous boyfriend and escapes to the only place she thinks she'll be safe. Her daughter Bey is a stoic and serious child, who always knows where things belong. She loves her mother, and comes to adore her new home in the big house with the fascinating garden.

Claire is not interested in a relationship with her neighbour, who despite all of Claire's culinary attempts to disuade him insists on still trying to court her. She is both glad and upset that her sister has returned after so long, but is also constantly terrified that Sidney and Bey will leave again. Sidney has to get used to living in the town she never felt she belonged in before, and meeting her old friends, most whom now shun her. She needs to learn to trust that the people around her won't hurt her or Bey, and that there are men out there who are not monsters.

Garden Spells is a book that features magical realism, and does it well. It never gets too kooky or twee. It reminded me of Joanne Harris' Chocolat and Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic (the book, NOT the awful film with Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman and that guy who replaced George Clooney as the hot one on ER). Both Practical Magic and Garden Spells feature two very different sisters with unusual abilities, at least one of whom is afraid of long-term commitment. Like Chocolat, this book features a woman who can do magical and remarkable things with the food she serves people, and whose presence in town changes the lives of those around her.

Garden Spells is a book about love. It features romance, but also the love between sisters, mother and child, and the close affections of true friendship. It's a sweet and uplifting book, which wouldn't have worked if it didn't also have some darkness in parts of the story. It celebrates the love of good food, of companionship and the need to find a place to belong. This novel is Sarah Addison Allen's debut novel, and based on her first book, I would very much be willing to read other books she writes, as well.