In fact, if you eat an apple from the tree the greatest event of your life will be revealed.Ĭlaire uses ingredients from the garden in the delicacies she cooks as part of her profitable catering business. The house has a garden with magical qualities, including an apple tree that bears fruit all year round. The story revolves around two sisters, the relatively strait-laced Claire Waverley and her younger wayward sister Sydney, from Bascom, North Carolina.Ĭlaire lives alone in a beautiful Queen Ann style house that has been in the family for generations. In fact, I read this book in two longish sittings while the rain pounded against the window one miserably wet Saturday and it was perfect fodder for an entertaining weekend read.

This is comfort reading: enjoyable, fluffy and fun. Well, the story is certainly magical - think English author Joanne Harris transported to North Carolina - but Garden Spells isn’t going to win any top literary awards. So you’ll just have to take my word for it.īut does the cover match the contents, I hear you say. The image shown here doesn’t do the real hold-it-in-your-hands cover justice, because it doesn’t quite convey the gorgeous embossing that glitters like fairy dust on the dress and curlicues. I know you shouldn’t judge books by their covers, but when this one came thudding through the door, courtesy of the publisher, I practically salivated over this soon-to-be published paperback, not so much because I was dying to read the story, but because the artwork was so delicious. Fiction – paperback Hodder 327 pages 2007.

Garden spells book review