Star Audio Book Review - Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen; Read by Susan Ericksen

This was my first introduction to the magical reality of Sarah Addison Allen and it was in stereo with the talents of new-to-me, narrator, Susan Ericksen. In Garden Spells, I met two estranged sisters who come from an eccentric family, the Waverley’s, who have been made known by their infamous mother and an even more bedazzling apple tree in their back yard garden. Claire Waverly, the more conventional sister, chose stay at home in their Southern town and embrace all that they were given by their mother and the apple tree. With the combination of a few tasty, ancestral recipes and the magic of the apple tree, Claire developed a prosperous catering company full of foods that would make even the most doubtful eater putty in their hands, shapeable and conforming to its hidden ingredients. The apple tree was a central figure, not just in Claire’s catering company but in the lives of all those who dared to eat one of its apples. Powerful and all-knowing not only in its great stature, the apple tree had the enchanting capacity to reveal the biggest event of a person’s life when one bit into one of its fruits. The allure of the tree was precisely what drew people to the Waverly’s and away from them, including Sydney Waverly, who spent the majority of her life running from it and their family’s secrets.

When Sydney has to escape David, the father of her only child, who is more dangerous than the mystical secrets of her past, she is forced to put aside her own childish and rebellious ways for the sake of her daughter, Bay, and returns home to the safety and the roots of her hometown. No sooner than Sydney comes home is she reminded of all the magic and mystery of her childhood and she finds herself having to confront her past and the people she spent so much time avoiding. On the one hand, it’s the first time Sydney has a chance to build a relationship with her sister, Claire, but not everyone is happy about her return home. Sydney and Claire find themselves working side by side on a journey full of love, life, mystery and magic.

Garden Spells was a true fairytale, complete with bad guys, love, revenge and of course, a little magic. Sarah Addison Allen and Sarah Ericksen made a good team of creator and narrator on this mystical journey of sisterhood and growth. For anyone who enjoys a good tale of magical realism with a little bit of Southern charm, this unabridged, fiction audio book is for you. Listen to it and others by Sarah Addison Allen.

3 STARS