Those Waverleys are back

So we’re back in Bascom, North Carolina, with another minor mystery for the Waverleys to solve. This time, it’s just before First Frost — a magical time for these witchy sisters when their enchanted apple tree starts stirring up all sorts of things. Everybody wants something — with no clear way to get it.

“She couldn’t change who she was, and she no longer wanted to, even if she could. She knew that who you are is a stone set deep inside you. You can spend all your life trying to dig that stone out, or you can build around it. Your choice.”

So this book jumps ahead about 10 years from Garden Spells — Bay, who I love, has become a quietly strange teenager. She still knows where things belong — and she’s convinced that a boy in her class belongs with her. Her mother, Sydney, has been trying and failing to conceive with the lovely Henry. Claire has fallen headfirst into a candy-making business that’s swallowing up the rest of her life — including her (weirdly normal) daughter and her lovely husband (the husbands get little to do in these books, besides shake their heads quietly at their nutty wives, but I like them just the same). Then a mysterious stranger comes to town….

Like Garden Spells, and most of the other Sarah Addison Allen books I’ve read, First Frost is sweet and fun, and easy enough to read in one or two evenings. Pure fun.