03 March 2009

Garden Spells - Sarah Addison Allen

Garden SpellsWhen I first saw this in Barnes & Noble last year (I think it was one of their featured books), I looked and thought "hmph, Alice Hoffman lite." In fact, it is Alice Hoffman lite, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The story about the prodigal witchy sister who comes home with her preternaturally-witchy girlchild is done nicely. I love the aunt whose magical gift is to give people peculiar things that turn out (of course) to be exactly what they do (or will) need. I got a little sick of the opinionated apple tree... Other characters veer into rather unpleasant and unfair stereotypes, but - it is lite -


Some of the background is delightful: lots of herbal lore, which I have loved in novels since reading The White Witch 40 years ago. Other background is so trite it's wince-worthy.


I listened to the audiobook whilst driving. I didn't like the narrator, whose voices and accents were distracting, but I did like the book as travel-along fare.

4 comments:

Aunt Kathy said...

I need to get some audio books, I love books but I love knitting too and I keep having to choose, {{sigh}}

Lost City Denise said...

Will have to get this! Thanks for the review.

Nancy Wetmore-Mathews said...

I actually have that here on my freebie shelf at work. Maybe I'll bring it home for the "to be read" pile.

Donna Lee said...

Sounds good. Now I have to wait to have space on my library audio card and look it up.