Garden Spells

 People often read to escape into a different world. Garden Spells, written by Sarah Addison Allen, definitely takes you to a different world. Yet, it's still a familiar one--kind of like when you meet someone you swear could pass for an old friend. Maybe, it's because we recognize a world in Garden Spells we thought existed when we were children. There was a time as children when myths and legends were simply fact. We picked up pennies in order to have a lucky day because a rhyme told us we would. For the same reason, we avoided stepping on cracks, lest our mothers suffer back pain. Small towns have their own myths. Often times, these colloquial myths are believed in more strongly. Where I grew up, there was an abandoned two story house filled with old books. No one knew (or remembered, anyway) why this house was just left there in disarray. This was declared at some point as our town's haunted house. It's normal for myths to be created around that which cannot be explained. The real difference between our world and the world of Garden Spells is that in the book, those small town myths are real.

     The story revolves around the two Waverly sisters. Claire Waverly lives in the old Queen Anne house she inherited from her grandmother. From there, she runs a lucrative catering business. Claire is a bit odd. I don't mean to say this because she is aloof, unsociable, and sometimes falls asleep in her garden; although, all of that is true. I say she is odd because her dishes have the ability to affect people in specific and calculated ways. There are herbs that cause regret, vegetables that calm nerves. If you want to remember your happiest memory, drink the rose geranium wine. Drink the non-alcoholic honeysuckle wine to clarify sight--both physically and mentally. Claire is very good at making dishes that produce the desired affect of her customers. She is not, however, very good at people. She lives alone in her big house and doesn't desire to let anyone new in. That is, until her estranged sister comes home. Sydney Waverly is Claire's younger sister. She left the Waverly's hometown of Bascom, North Carolina at age eighteen and didn't look back for ten years. When she does come home, she has a six-year old child and a reason to want to feel safe.
     
    Garden Spells centers around the two sisters--their separate lives and their relationship to each other, but it's really about the entire town of Bascom, North Carolina. The Waverly family may have been born with subtle magic powers, but everyone in Bascom seems to have been born with predestined traits. As I mentioned before, the world of Garden Spells looks like our world on the surface. There are old high school grudges, town gossips, heartbreaks, and new loves. But it becomes evident (right around the time Claire singes her clothes with frustration) that this is not our world. Everyone's personality traits are determined by their family names. This isn't caused by anything supernatural, but more by the society's belief system. Most of the Bascom residents accepts myths to be true even if they don't admit it out loud. There is nothing better to perpetuate myths than wide spread belief in them. The fact that these people each accept what's believed about them as true was fascinating to me. It really raised the question as to whether you are what's said about you or how much of that is just self fulfilling prophesy.
   
    As much as I loved Garden Spells, there were a few missteps. Often, Allen tells us a little too much about a character instead of allowing the reader to get to know them. For a few characters, she laid out the person's personality and background in a few paragraphs and then never allowed those characters to prove those traits to be true. This left us with several beautifully fleshed out and dynamic characters, some static and incomplete characters, and a few flat characters with personality traits given to them, but not earned. This was Allen's first novel, so I'm hoping she improves this aspect of her writing. The other problem was the six-year old, Bay. Bay was actually a wonderful character. She just wasn't believable as a six-year old. At times, she would narrate and we would see the world through her eyes. I understand that some kids can be quite precocious, but Bay understood the world and communicated it in a way that isn't possible for a child younger than ten and is probably more common for a child of twelve.
     
    Garden Spells is short, ending at around 250 pages, but Allen doesn't waste any of those pages. She covers a plethora of subjects in a short time, making her book so absolutely captivating that I finished it in two days. Faster readers could easily finish it in a few hours. The story is a charming one, and it's hard not to fall in love with the people of Bascom, North Carolina. It's one of those books that reads like it should be a movie, which I suppose says something about the vividness of the picture painted. And despite some darker subjects mentioned, Garden Spells is a generally light read that I would recommend to anyone seeking a quick read with a sweet and satisfying story.