Book Review - Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

This was Sarah Addison Allen's first book, and many of her readers' favorites. Earlier in 2011 I read The Sugar Queen (my review here) and really enjoyed it, so I decided to read everything else by Allen. Magical realism became a new favorite genre for me.

I read this back in September, and now 4 months later, I hardly remember the plot but I remember it was a cute, sweet but predictable story. I could see its appeal to readers given its magical aspect, though it was magic without a feasible explanation (yes I am weird about that, it's hard for me to just believe in magic without some logic. In fact, have you read the article about Santa Clause from an engineering's perspective?  No I am not an engineer, but my mind works kinda like that.)

Anyway I digress.

None of the characters really stood out (apart from the apple tree!) and I remembered some of them were a bit stereotypical. I did enjoy Allen's writing though. My favorite part of the book was reading about the unusual pairing of exotic favors in cakes or other dishes - they sounded magical (hehe - see, there is a plausible explanation for this type of food magic!) 

At that time, I gave this book a 3.5. But now I think I'll lower it to 3 since it didn't have much staying power for me, unlike The Sugar Queen.

3 / 5 .

Note - borrowed from the library.


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