The Book Charmer by Karen Hawkins 📖📖📖
Ever read a book that both surpassed your expectations and disappointed you simultaneously? That was my experience with this book.
The Book Charmer is Sarah Dove, a librarian in Dove Pond, NC, who has had books speak to her since she was a young child. I was expecting this to be in the genre of magical realism among the lines of Garden Spells and Practical Magic, and if it was then it was 95% realism and 5% magic.
The main character of this book is actually Grace, who doesn’t have magical abilities but does have a host of real life problems - an unexpected adopted daughter and a mother suffering from dementia. This book is a caring examination of the struggles in supporting loved ones when one is drowning oneself and the importance of community and family, but it was very heavy. Furthermore the ending was very sudden and didn’t fit the rest of the story.
Definitely a good read but doesn’t at all fit the genre it’s marketed as being part of.
