5 stars
R-3
I love Sarah Addison Allen. I really do.
Once again, she's given us a fascinating tale of broken people and families... and healing. With a bit of magic sprinkled in. :D
This book is two stories... maybe even 3... told in tandem.
Emily is a teenager entering a new phase of life-- living with the grandfather she didn't know she had. As she learns more about her mother's past, Emily can't decide which is harder-- living up to her mother's memory or living it down.
Dulcie is not actually present in the book, but permeates it. Emily's mother left everything behind and never looked back... and never told Emily anything. Slowly we learn the whole story along with Emily.
Julia is getting ready to hit the road. She thinks. Heading for home... maybe. But where is home really? This town she grew up in or her new life in Baltimore? Wherever she is, she continues to bake her cakes with the windows open....
This book counts for the Support Your Local Library Challenge and is our book club's pick for this month.
Which leads me to my question for you-- I was talking to my cousin who's in the book club with me and she said "So it's a fantasy?"
I said not really.
But that got me thinking. What is it? Where do Allen's books fall? They don't seem to quite fall into the category of paranormal. They're not really fantasy. I wouldn't call them urban fantasy....
WHAT ARE THEY????
Seriously, now that the question is in my head, my OCD tendencies have taken over and it's driving me nuts. Help me out-- where would YOU put these???
They fall under magical realism. Where magical elements are sort of woven without any fuss through a realistic setting to enhance the characters' understanding of their world. Basically. :)
ReplyDeleteI love them, too. I loved Julia so much.
So that falls somewhere in between paranormal and literary fiction? :D
ReplyDeleteJulia's awesome. I want to dye a pink streak in my hair now.
(Okay, maybe not pink. Purple... or orange... yeah, okay, maybe not.)
I've seen a lot of good things about this book. I haven't read anything by Sarah Addison Allen yet. Should I start with Garden Spells?
ReplyDeleteYou know, since they aren't connected, I'm not sure it matters where you start.
ReplyDeleteThey're all good!!
(Girl Who Chased the Moon is harder to get from the library right now, at least in Salt Lake, because it's so new and there were tons of holds before the library even got it.)