There aren't many things in life that can matter more than friendship. It will stand the test of time, old age and silly little arguments, no matter what.

Sarah Addison Allen has once again brought a startlingly sad and sweet tale that combines people, love, and relationships with just a hint of magic that borders on the realm of coincidence. The Peach Keeper is a surprise, bursting with richness set in a curiously eclectic Southern town in North Carolina called Walls of Water that boasts tourist traffic for its famous waterfalls, along with the mystical morning fog that tends to slightly disorient visitors. The famous fog from Walls of Water is also sold in jars. Tourists love that.

Willa runs an outdoor store in her regimented, even boring, life. After all, Friday night happens to be vacuuming night. Quite a difference from her years in high school many moons ago as the known prankster. And Paxton, a high society princess has much more heart underneath all of the precision and planning she so religiously undertakes in every aspect of her life. Working on bringing back the dilapidated manor that once roared with life seventy five years ago so that she can hold a gala, she is consumed with order and makes lists as a hobby. In order to clear out the weeds and to allow for the landscaping to begin, an aging tree out front is removed, which unearths a most unique discovery that brings the past into the present, and ties Willa and Paxton together into an unexpected friendship.

There's no other way to say it except that Sarah Addison Allen has never let me down. She's my comfort read, the type of author who paints a magical world somehow stuck in the midst of reality. I am drawn to her work because it completely removes me from the day-to-day stresses and makes me think for just one blissful moment that perhaps there really is just a little bit of magic still left in the world. I was hooked on when I first read Garden Spells. Then The Sugar Queen, and now, The Peach Keeper. Color me giddy with glee when I realized that there is apparently a book that came out after The Sugar Queen that I didn't know about and I can pick up! 

Her mixture of magical realism, friendships, and food, leap out of the pages with its lyrical dance of description so effectively, I can feel each moment, sense the oddness in the scene with what could very well be just coincidence, and taste the sugary sweetness of the food that is fleetingly described.

This is yet another remarkable story from Sarah Addison Allen of friendships, love, and a reminder to never let a chance of true happiness ever slip you by. And as I mentioned the other day, Sarah Addison Allen is the "sucks-you-in-and-keeps-you-reading-until-your-vision-blurs" type of storyteller. I eagerly await anything she writes. Absolutely anything.

Go. Get. This. Book. Now.

If you enjoyed Liz Michalski's Evenfall and of course, Alice Hoffman, then you should pick up The Peach Keeper right away. Oh, and The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff, too. All equally magical, heartwarming, and delectable.

About the Author (Just a Few Things About Sarah from her website)

1. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a trash man. I would spend hours daydreaming about riding on the back of a garbage truck, jumping off at every house and dumping people’s trash into it.
2. I was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, a place Rolling Stone magazine once called "America’s New Freak Capital."
3. I have my B.A. in Literature, a major I chose because I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate.
4. I can’t turn away stray cats and I’m convinced they know this.
5. My father was a copy editor, reporter and award-winning columnist for our local paper.
6. My mother has a nose ring, but we pretend it’s not there.
7. Garden Spells, my mainstream debut, didn’t start out as a magical novel. It was supposed to be a simple story about two sisters reconnecting after many years. But then the apple tree started throwing apples and the story took on a life of its own...and my life hasn’t been the same since

Visit the author on her website by clicking here.

Visit the author on Facebook by clicking here.

Follow the author on Twitter by clicking here.

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Many thanks to Lisa at TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to read this book, and apologies for noting down the wrong date to post. Upcoming tour stops are listed below - if you haven't visited the blogs below, now is the time!

Wednesday, April 13th:  Knowing the Difference

Friday, April 15th:  Peeking Between the Pages

Monday, April 18th:  Bewitched Bookworms

Tuesday, April 19th:  Book Reviews by Molly

Wednesday, April 20th:  A Few More Pages

Thursday, April 21st:  Sara’s Organized Chaos

Friday, April 22nd:  Life in Review

Monday, April 25th:  The Broke and the Bookish

Tuesday, April 26th:  Life in the Thumb

Wednesday, April 27th:  Crazy for Books

Thursday, April 28th: A Fair Substitute for Heaven

Monday, May 2nd:  Fizzy Thoughts

Tuesday, May 3rd:  Coffee and a Book Chick

Wednesday, May 4th:  Jenn’s Bookshelves

Thursday, May 5th:  Alison’s Book Marks

Friday, May 6th:  Bookfoolery and Babble

Monday, May 9th:  A Library of My Own

Tuesday, May 10th:  Teresa’s Reading Corner

Wednesday, May 11th:  Unabridged Chick

Monday, May 16th:  A Bookshelf Monstrosity

Wednesday, May 18th:  Two Kids and Tired

Friday, May 20th:  In the Next Room

Business travel this week in Minneapolis and Memphis has made me so homesick. I return to Florida on Friday, but tonight, I am in my hotel room in Memphis, listening to the rain and what I think might be a distant, yet intermittent, tornado siren. I've heard that there may be tornadoes tonight and so to find comfort in it all, I've closed my night with crying through the last few chapters of the heartfelt and endearing The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry.

Ginny Selvaggio is twenty-six years old, and she's spent her whole life comforted with food. But not eating food, instead making it. Taking recipes and creating dishes, searching food blogs and trying new things. She is an adventurer in her life by searching the internet and reading new food techniques to try out, but she is an adventurer only inside her house. She's never moved out of her parent's home, and with their recent, unexpected deaths, along with her sister wanting to sell the house and move Ginny into her home, Ginny's feeling a little overwhelmed.

To cooking she goes. The process of caramelizing onions reassures her, the smells of chocolate occupy her during moments of stress, figuring out how the combinations of a spice with something sweet will enhance each. This is how she copes with it all. And right now, the oddest thing is happening. When she makes the recipes of those who have died, they come back to visit, sitting on the stool in the kitchen, only staying long enough while the smell of their food lingers. And because she can interact with them, she asks them questions, putting her on a path to find out who she really is, to find out why she is the way she is.

Ginny is something most people aren't. She's literal. Blunt. If you tell her that she's beating around the bush, she'd probably be confused and, while not looking right at you, respond with something like "I'm not beating around a bush. I'm standing right here." Not surprisingly, this type of personality doesn't win her a lot of friends.

And because this book is about cooking, and especially cooking the recipes from family that mean the most, I want to write a clever post with analogies of Ginny's cooking and Jael McHenry's beautiful writing, because the story is a fulfilling creation that leaves the reader, the one consuming, satisfied and full with happiness. But then I want to stop myself because I think that's what everyone else would do. Then, I think, as long as I share with you this important fact from me, it will be okay: this is a book I loved. I loved the quirkiness of Ginny, the tough outer shell of her sister Amanda, the soft comfort of their housekeeper Gert, and Gert's son, the confused and heartbroken David. I read the last half in two hours, making mental notes of each recipe I'll be cooking in my kitchen this weekend when I get home. I already like to cook, but this story gave me an even deeper, more holistic and appreciative view of it. The creation of equal parts sadness, family, love, and food into one flourishing finish of a story that will be devoured quickly, left me with a craving for Jael McHenry's next book. 

If you like a dash of magical realism, along with cooking, recipes thrown into it all, then I'm pretty sure you'll like this book.

About the Author

Jael McHenry is a talented and enthusiastic amateur cook who grew up in Michigan and Iowa before moving from city to city along the East Coast: Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and now New York, where she blogs about food and cooking at the Simmer blog, http://simmerblog.typepad.com. She is a monthly pop culture columnist and Editor-in-Chief of Intrepid Media, online at intrepidmedia.com. Her work has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, Indiana Review, and the Graduate Review at American University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. In her senior year at Tufts University she appeared as a semi-finalist on the “Jeopardy!” College Championship, where she made a killing in consolation prizes. The Kitchen Daughter is her first novel.

Visit the author on her website by clicking here.

Follow the author on Twitter by clicking here.

Visit The Kitchen Daughter on Facebook by clicking here.

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Many thanks to Lisa with TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to read this book. Upcoming tour stops are listed below - if you haven't visited the blogs below, now is the time!

All of the blogs reviewing this book and other books on tour can be found by clicking here.

Monday, April 11th:  girlichef

Wednesday, April 13th:  Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Thursday, April 14th:  She is Too Fond of Books

Friday, April 15th:  Book Club Classics!

Monday, April 18th:  The Singleton in the Kitchen

Tuesday, April 19th:  Back to Books

Wednesday, April 20th:  Coffee and a Book Chick

Thursday, April 21st:  Books Like Breathing

Monday, April 25th:  Simply Stacie

Tuesday, April 26th:  Book Reviews by Molly

Wednesday, April 27th:  Kahakai Kitchen

Thursday, April 28th:  2 Kids and Tired

Monday, May 2nd:  The Brain Lair

Tuesday, May 3rd:  Stephanie’s Written Word

Friday, May 6th:  Book Addiction

Monday, May 9th:  Farmgirl Fare

Tuesday, May 10th:  Overstuffed

Wednesday, May 11th:  Books, Movies, and Chinese Food

Friday, May 13th:  The Literate Housewife Review

When a flock of hoopoe birds arrive at the time a young girl is born, midwives descend upon a home to usher in the birth of a child born under these prophesied events. The mother dies after childbirth and Eleonora, a gifted child, grows up with her attentive father and strict stepmother. When her father has to sail to Stamboul (Istanbul) on business, eight-year-old Eleonora becomes a stowaway on the boat to escape the overbearing stepmother who believes Eleonora should only focus on housework instead of books. Upon arriving in Stamboul, she is welcomed into the home of her father's business partner, and her life expands. Surrounded by the tools of knowledge, her intellectual genius flourishes, one in which this eight-year-old girl speaks multiple languages, can write passages verbatim from Virgil's The Aeneid, and breaks code with the ease of an expert. Soon, her interaction with the Sultan grows into an advisory capacity, and the future of Stamboul is affected. Could she fulfill the prophecy?

Mastering the brilliance of historical fiction and vivid imagery, Michael David Lukas has crafted an elegant debut novel set in Stamboul, and I was absolutely drawn in from the first page. With rich and vibrant colors combined with the grittiness of life in the late 1800s in Turkey, and with just a dash of magical realism, the book resonates with the flourish of beautiful imagery. Each character is intense and genuine, and it's clear that research has been carefully documented. I had an incredibly difficult time putting this book down once I was caught up in the new life of a little eight-year-old girl (who is essentially a savant) and with the fluidity of the events and descriptions of her experiences and most especially, her abilities. I have a sneaking suspicion that there might be a follow-up to this book (this just may be, though, since I enjoyed this book so much, more of my own wish to travel back and escape into Eleonora's world again). This debut author has prepared readers for a long career and I anticipate more of his work!

One of my favorite passages:

In its time, the sun rose unsteady from a distant corner of the sky, and with it the fog lifted. Already the Bosporus was teeming, packed with fishing boats, caïques, and the occasional lumbering steamer. On the shore, under the shades of cypress trees, miniature people hawked and haggled, bustled, bargained, and prayed. Three gargantuan turtle-domed mosques glinted in the rising sun, their minarets piercing the sky like bayonets, and there, at the confluence of waters, was the most glorious building Eleonora had ever seen. Gardens upon gardens, arches, balustrades, and clerestories ringed by a gleaming white marble wall and watched over by a regiment of glass towers, Topkapi Palace, the residence of His Excellency Sultan Abdulhamid II, sat perched on the rim of the Golden Horn, a testament to inconceivable wealth. (Chapter Seven)

It's pretty safe to say that I loved this book...

About the Author

Michael David Lukas has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a late-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a Rotary Scholar in Tunisia. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Maryland, his writing has been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and the Georgia Review. He has received scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf  Writers' Conference, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. He currently lives in Oakland, CA, less than a mile from where he was born. When he isn't writing, he teaches creative writing to third and fourth graders.

Find out more about Michael at his website by clicking here.

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Many thanks to Trish with TLC Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to read this book!

Please take a look through the upcoming tour schedule to read more reviews!

All of the tour stops for this book can be found by clicking here.
Monday, February 28th: A Fair Substitute for Heaven

Tuesday, March 1st: Unabridged Chick

Wednesday, March 2nd: Simply Stacie

Thursday, March 3rd: Janet Boyer Blog

Friday, March 4th: Kelly’s Lucky You!

Monday, March 7th: Book Journey 

Tuesday, March 8th: Coffee and a Book Chick

Wednesday, March 9th: Teresa’s Reading Corner

Wednesday, March 9th: Bloggin’ ‘Bout Books

Monday, March 14th: Like Fire

Wednesday, March 16th: The Whimsical Cottage

Monday, March 21st: Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

Wednesday, March 23rd: Layers of Thought

Happy Reading,

Coffee and a Book Chick

"The day I returned to Templeton steeped in disgrace, the fifty-foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass.  It was one of those strange purple dawns that color July there, when the bowl made by the hills fills with a thick fog and even the songbirds sing timorously, unsure of day or night."

So begins Lauren Groff's debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton, published by Hyperion in 2008, and it is a many-layered story of secrets -- both within a family and within a town.  From the moment Wilhelmina "Willie" Upton returns to her hometown of Templeton, more events begin to unfurl, of which she has just recently left many to forget.

What a true disaster Willie's made of everything, really.  A mess by her own making and embarrassed by her mistakes and poor personal choices, Willie is now a woman in her late twenties who, although is a smart archaeology grad student, can't really seem to make a good personal decision when it comes to men.  She has a devastating end to her scandalous affair with her older, and married Professor, resulting in a pregnancy, and she feels even more intense guilt as she runs away, since she feels that she has abandoned her best friend, Clarissa in San Francisco, who is suffering from a devastating illness that requires many a hospital visit and treatment.  It's really much too much for Willie to take in and manage, and since she's afraid that she will be kicked out of school because of her scandalous affair, she returns with her head hung low back to her childhood home and town and especially to her mother, maybe just to escape for a while to wait until either the dust settles, or some form of clarity manages to rise in the muddle of it all.  Her mother, Vi, has a Bohemian past but is now a Sunday church regular, and has always raised Willie with the story that her father could have been any one of three hippies at a commune, but she now reveals a secret she's always kept, and which she now sets upon Willie to uncover the truth, if only to distract Willie from the massive mess she's made.

With the monster's corpse coming to the lake's surface, it brings a change to the town.  The monster has always been myth, legend, speculation, but the monster was always believed to exist by the town (as much as a monster's existence can truly be believed, though) and no one truly knew the quiet, goodness it held.  A whirl of visitors now floods into town to see, record, and report on the monster.  Prior to this great event, the many visitors to the town only were tourists visiting the baseball museum, one fashioned after Groff's own home of Cooperstown.  

As the story moves between Willie's current day and in snapshots of her family's past, she uses her archaeology training to dig further and deeper and uncover a truth that is far greater than any expedition she was previously on with her lover.  Willie reads from the 1700s to the early 1900s in diary entries, personal letters, and newspaper clippings to piece together who may actually be her father.

It's an amazing story, full of secrets, ghosts, a monster of a lake, intertwined with love, sadness, regret.  Amazing and quirky characters fill the pages, both real people in history polished with a little bit of fiction, along with brilliant humor and dark pain gracing each moment.  I found myself comfortable and lolling in the story as I would imagine I would be in a small boat on the monster's lake.

I stayed up late to finish reading this.  I was held hostage in the story and kept thinking, "what next?"  There is such majesty of language, such smooth stringing of words even more beautiful and melodious when spoken, and I found that Lauren Groff tied up every story line, and not one thing was left out.  I was able to close the book satisfied, and know that I didn't have one question left, save for my imagination walking by the lake with one of the characters, waiting for the fog to settle to see if maybe it was a trick of my eyes, or if I just saw one of the many monsters of the town.  Great, fabulous, read -- I'm excited to read anything Lauren Groff has coming next!

Happy Reading!
Coffee and a Book Chick