"Garden Spells" by Sarah Addison Allen
Read: 3/20/09 5/5 stars The title promises spells and delivers them. Spellbinding enough to keep me up till I finished it, Garden Spells is a magic realism-culinary treat, Southern style. The story revolves around the surviving Waverleys of Bascom, heirs of a magic garden and not without individual magic themselves. Claire, the older sister, stays behind in Bascom, running a catering business which specializes in incorporating edible flowers from her garden into the dishes. Her dishes are popular for the reactions they evoke in people--like chicken and water chestnut casserole made with snapdragon seed oil to ward off undue influence of others, fruit salad with dandeliion petals to influence spontaneous apologies, tea cakes with nasturtium mayonaisse to give people the ability to keep secrets, and a host of other scrumptiously described magical dishes. But Claire is a control freak and has intimacy issues. Perhaps the only person really close to her is her aging cousin Evanelle, also ...