Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan

 

Author Patti Callahan has long wondered about the origin of the world of Narnia of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and she explores this curiosity in her new book, Once Upon a Wardrobe. In this novel, Callahan creates the back story by exploring the early life of the Ireland native, author C.S. Lewis.

To tell this story set in December of 1950 in Worcester, England of how Narnia came to be, Callahan has created a brother and sister, George and Megs Devonshire. Eight-year-old George has a heart condition that could end his life at any time. Megs is a student at Somerville College, part of Oxford University, where Lewis teaches. George charges Megs with finding out, “Where did Narnia come from?” From the author’s imagination is not an answer George wants to accept.

Megs starts to hang out around the author’s home in hopes of catching him long enough to find out the answer. Instead, the author’s brother invites her into their home so she can ask Lewis her important question. Soon, Megs becomes a regular visitor to the Lewis home where she is entertained with stories about the brothers’ childhoods. She shares these stories with George when she returns home to Worcester regularly instead of staying in Oxford.

Megs and George put together the pieces of the Lewis brothers’ lives shared in story-form to figure out some answers for themselves. Fans of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as well as of Callahan’s books will be sure to add this enchanting tale to their to-be-read pile.

This is Callahan’s second book about C.S. Lewis as she wrote Becoming Mrs. Lewis in 2018 about his wife, Joy Davidman. A former pediatric nurse, Callahan is a co-creator and co-host of the weekly podcast Friends and Fiction on Facebook.  She is a full-time author, wife, and mother of three with homes in both Alabama and South Carolina.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 31, 2021.

I would like to thank Harper Muse, an imprint of HarperCollins Focus LLC, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

His Loving Wife by Miranda Smith

 

His Loving Wife by Miranda Smith should come with a warning: Reader, do not start unless you have the time to read it to the very end because this thriller begs no interruptions! The novel will be out October 4, 2021.

Kate Brooks grew up in the mountains of North Carolina but nothing in her upraising prepared her for a home invasion. The plot is boosted forward as Kate and her husband Andrew and children Willow and Noah are attempting to heal from that trauma months ago by renting a vacation home on the ocean.

Even though she tries, Kate cannot relax because she sees her intruder everywhere. Worse, she knows him, a guy named Paul who she dated in college. He’s out now on bail, and Kate is afraid for herself and her family. But even in jail, Paul is still reaching out, still threatening her. How is he able to do that? Who is helping him? This reader stayed up until the wee hours to find out those answers.

This psychological thriller is recommended to those readers who enjoyed novels like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train.

Miranda Smith has worked as a staff writer at a local newspaper and as a high school English teacher. She writes domestic and psychological suspense books about complicated women, dark impulses, and Southern settings. She lives in East Tennessee with her husband and three children. Her other books include Not My Mother, The One Before, What I Know, and Some Days are Dark.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 31, 2021.

I would like to thank Bookouture and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

 

The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman

 Readers who have been under the spell of the Owens family of the Practical Magic series are in luck as Alice Hoffman is bewitching readers with the final book in the series, The Book of Magic.

In her 2020 novel Magic Lessons, she outlined the centuries-old curse on the family to its source by telling the story of Maria Owens, the matriarch of the line.  The curse is on love and has continued for 300 years, but Jet Owens is about to spell out an action that will undo it as she faces her last seven days on earth.

Jet confides in her sister Franny about the deathwatch beetle now shadowing Jet. In the meantime, an accident has caused the love of one of their great-niece’s to be in a coma, an obvious playing out of the curse. Jet has left Franny a note about a book Jet found hidden in the library that will break the curse, but the book and the note have fallen into the hands of great-niece Kylie Owens by accident.

Sally, Kylie and Antonia’s mother, has long protected her daughters from the truth about their family. When she learns Kylie has fled to Europe to find out more information as she looks for a way to end the curse to save her boyfriend Gideon’s life, Sally, her sister Gillian, Aunt Franny, and Franny’s long-lost brother Vincent head first to Paris and then London to rescue Kylie from things she does not understand and help her undo the curse.

Unfortunately, reversing the 300-year-old curse will require a sacrifice: a life for a life. The path to freeing the Owens from the curse is tangled as the group enlists a professor/writer to help find Kylie in England, the home of Maria Owens three centuries ago.

Alice Hoffman has written these final two books as a response to her readers who thirsted for more. “My readers sent me back to the world of Practical Magic,” she said in an interview in the Library Journal. “I had so many letters and messages asking for more, and after writing The Rules of Magic, which takes place in the 60s and 70s, I decided to go all the way back, to the original Owens ancestor, Maria Owens. I’m always interested in how the past influences the present, who the ghosts in the nursery are, who has influenced us, even if we never knew them.” In addition to the Practical Magic series and other novels, she writes short stories. Born in New York, Hoffman lives in Boston.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting August 20, 2021.

I would like to thank Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.