The synopsis: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town’s famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.
It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal. And Willa herself has long strived to build a life beyond the brooding Jackson family shadow. No easy task in a town shaped by years of tradition and the well-marked boundaries of the haves and have-nots.
But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree, and certain to drag up dire consequences along with it.
For the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind. Long-kept secrets surrounding the troubling remains have also come to light, seemingly heralded by a spate of sudden strange occurrences throughout the town.
Now, thrust together in an unlikely friendship, united by a full-blooded mystery, Willa and Paxton must confront the dangerous passions and tragic betrayals that once bound their families—and uncover truths of the long-dead that have transcended time and defied the grave to touch the hearts and souls of the living.
Resonant with insight into the deep and lasting power of friendship, love, and tradition, The Peach Keeper is a portrait of the unshakable bonds that—in good times and bad, from one generation to the next—endure forever.
My thoughts: Another instance of a cover that would suck me into the purchase alone. Simple and beautiful, it's enchanting, just as the book undoubtedly will be.
Willa was a fascinating study from the start, getting to know her though, was a pleasure. The back story of the town, of Willa's family, and of the father she'd loved so much and lost bought my attention wholly, and until I turned to the last page I couldn't put it down or devote my attention to anything else.

All I can do is hope that these novels laced with magic are bountiful in the future, and we have much more of Sarah Addison Allen to look forward to. Something tells me there are so many more lovely stories to be told.

The synopsis: Emily Benedict has come to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realizes that mysteries aren’t solved in Mullaby, they’re a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, not only wishing to satisfy the town’s sweet tooth but also dreaming of rekindling the love she fears might be lost forever. Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily’s backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.

My thoughts: Everything about this book was perfect. The nuances of each character, every story to create the dimensions and layers to peel back of each person in Mullaby adds to an already compelling story, and then the town secrets that have fostered the bad blood between families make it unforgettable. The love stories go beyond those of Emily and Winn and Julia and Sawyer. Emily and her grandfather's pains and regret are palpable. Vance's pain at being who he is, losing his wife and his daughter transcend the pages, and his love and devotion to fixing everything that stands in the way of honoring his daughter Dulcie's memory: the one she deserved, not the one she ran away from and that Emily was endowed with upon arrival leap from the pages. The dialogue pops and the humor of the main characters made me want to immediately find a way to be part of this place.


Tomorrow, Walls on Water North Carolina.

The synopsis: Twenty-seven-year-old Josey Cirrini is sure of three things: winter in her North Carolina hometown is her favorite season, she’s a sorry excuse for a Southern belle, and sweets are best eaten in the privacy of her hidden closet. For while Josey has settled into an uneventful life in her mother’s house, her one consolation is the stockpile of sugary treats and paperback romances she escapes to each night…. Until she finds it harboring none other than local waitress Della Lee Baker, a tough-talking, tenderhearted woman who is one part nemesis—and two parts fairy godmother… Fleeing a life of bad luck and big mistakes, Della Lee has decided Josey’s clandestine closet is the safest place to crash. In return she’s going to change Josey’s life—because, clearly, it is not the closet of a happy woman. With Della Lee’s tough love, Josey is soon forgoing pecan rolls and caramels, tapping into her startlingly keen feminine instincts, and finding her narrow existence quickly expanding. Before long, Josey bonds with Chloe Finley, a young woman who makes the best sandwiches in town, is hounded by books that inexplicably appear whenever she needs them, and—most amazing of all—has a close connection to Josey’s longtime crush. As little by little Josey dares to step outside herself, she discovers a world where the color red has astonishing power, passion can make eggs fry in their cartons, and romance can blossom at any time—even for her. It seems that Della Lee’s work is done, and it’s time for her to move on. But the truth about where she’s going, why she showed up in the first place—and what Chloe has to do with it all—is about to add one more unexpected chapter to Josey’s fast-changing life. Brimming with warmth, wit, and a sprinkling of magic, here is a spellbinding tale of friendship, love—and the enchanting possibilities of every new day.


My thoughts: This one had it all, tears and laughter, quick wit, punchy dialogue and a fascinating past unwinding, all with the help of a most surprising twist. Yet another I couldn't put down. I loved Josey immediately, and wanted nothing more than for her to find her place, in a spot where she wouldn't be tormented by such an angry mother. The friendships that grew between Josey & Chloe and Josey & Della were touching and fun, the stalkers Chloe had in books was no less fascinating. This was a story that will stay on your mind for a while.

Tomorrow - Mullaby, North Carolina which is where I first fell in love with this author just a bit.

The synopsis:
While driving home late at night after a party, Anna and her friend Ellen crash head-on into another car. It isn't until later in the hospital that Anna, who had been driving, discovers her brother's girlfriend Cameron was the driver of the other car and had been killed in the accident.
Although Ellen suffers considerable physical injuries, Anna is more emotionally than bodily damaged by the event and wrestles with immense guilt, even though the accident was not her fault. As she struggles to reestablish her relationship with her brother Jack as well as with herself, Anna confronts other issues, such as her father's verbal abuse and her mother's passivity in the face of his aggression. With the help of therapy, Anna not only begins to heal from the accident, but also comes to terms with older emotional wounds.

The synopsis: Death is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

Coming home from a Hawaiian vacation with her best girlfriends, Lucy Fisher is stunned to find everything she owns tossed out on her front lawn, the locks changed, and her fiancé’s phone disconnected—plus she’s just lost her job. With her world spinning wildly out of her control, Lucy decides to make a new start and moves upstate to live with her sister and nephew.

But then things take an even more dramatic turn: A fatal encounter with public transportation lands Lucy not in the hereafter but in the nearly hereafter. She’s back in school, learning the parameters of spooking and how to become a successful spirit in order to complete a ghostly assignment. If Lucy succeeds, she’s guaranteed a spot in the next level of the afterlife—but until then, she’s stuck as a ghost in the last place she would ever want to be.

Trying to avoid being trapped on earth for all eternity, Lucy crosses the line between life and death and back again when she returns home. Navigating the perilous channels of the paranormal, she’s determined to find out why her life crumbled and why, despite her ghastly death, no one seems to have noticed she’s gone. But urgency on the spectral plane—in the departed person of her feisty grandmother, who is risking both their eternal lives—requires attention, and Lucy realizes that you get only one chance to be spectacular in death.

My thoughts: Amazing. I can't recommend Notaro enough. If you've somehow never come across her autobiographical Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club books, check out her first novel There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell and this one. Rife with her humor and cleverness, reading Notaro's mind in action is all kinds of fascinating. Beyond that, if you're like me and love all things to do with different hereafters, this is the book for you. If you loved Earthly Pleasures, you'll enjoy this also.

The synopsis:
As a world-class equestrienne and Olympic contender, Annemarie Zimmer lived for the thrill of flight atop a strong, graceful animal. Then, at eighteen, a tragic accident destroyed her riding career and Harry, her beloved and distinctively marked horse.
Now, twenty years later, Annemarie is coming home to her dying father's New Hampshire horse farm. Jobless and abandoned, she is bringing her troubled teenaged daughter to this place of pain and memory, where ghosts of an unresolved youth still haunt the fields and stables -- and where hope lives in the eyes of the handsome, gentle veterinarian Annemarie loved as a girl ... and in the seductive allure of a trainer with a magic touch.
But everything will change yet again with one glimpse of a red and white striped gelding startlingly similar to the one Annemarie lost in another lifetime. And an obsession is born that could shatter her fragile world.

My thoughts: I wanted to love this, I really did. Since Water for Elephants is one of my favorite novels, and I can read it over and over and be no less touched, I had high hopes for Riding Lessons and it's follow up, but the austere personality of Annemarie ultimately turned me off of the novel as a whole. The lack of relatability of the main character just was too much for me to bridge.