Garden Spells

Claire has everything she thinks she needs, until one day she wakes to find a stranger has moved in next door and a vine of ivy has crept into her garden... and her carefully tended life is about to run gloriously out of control.

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today & Publisher's Weekly Bestseller

🏆 BookSense Pick

🏆 2008 SIBA Book Award winner for fiction

🏆 Best Women's Fiction of 2007 by the American Library Association's Reading List

Spellbindingly charming, Allen's impressively accomplished debut novel will bewitch fans of Alice Hoffman and Laura Esquivel, as her entrancing brand of magic realism nimbly blends the evanescent desires of hopeless romantics with the inherent wariness of those who have been hurt once too often.
- Booklist (Starred review) - Carol Haggas

With enough grassroots buzz, Allen's mainstream debut...could become a best seller...It's refreshing to find a Southern novel that doesn't depend on folksy humor or stereotypes but instead on the imaginative use of magical realism. Just buy it, read it, and recommend it to others.
- Library Journal (Starred review) - Rebecca Kelm

...The blending of horticultural folklore, the supernatural and a big dollop of Southern flavor should find favor with a wide swath of readers.
- Publishers Weekly

It is a privilege and an honor to lend support to Sarah Addison Allen and her amazing and magical first novel GARDEN SPELLS. This story is simply as irresistible as it is unforgettable. Ms. Allen has put writers everywhere on notice and raised the bar as high as an apple tree. My only regret is that GARDEN SPELLS wasn't a thousand pages longer! Congratulations to you, Sarah Addison Allen for an off-the-blocks triumph! I can't wait to see what you come up with next!
- New York Times Bestseller - Dorothea Benton Frank

Sarah Addison Allen has crafted a wonderful story that will cast a spell on everyone who has the pleasure of reading it. GARDEN SPELLS has a harvest of rich characters, a plot that will have you checking what you eat, and a heart that is overflowing with the tangled joys and sorrows of love and life.
- Kris Radish, author of Sunday List of Dreams

Sweet and magical, sure to cast its spell over even the most skeptical heart.
- New York Times Bestseller - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

GARDEN SPELLS is so tender and enchanting, it drew me in on page one, and held me captivated—without letting me go for even a minute—until the end. I fell in love with Sarah Addison Allen’s writing, and her world. She believes in love, and that’s her magic: She conjures a garden of moon vine and angel’s trumpet, fills it with characters who need each other, and writes so well you’ll never forget any of them.
- New York Times Bestseller - Luanne Rice

GARDEN SPELLS is truly spellbinding, beautifully crafted and as bewitching as the title suggests. This is Southern charm at its most beguiling, with characters you'll take to your heart, a delicious love story, and a magical garden you'll wish was in your own backyard. I devoured it in one sitting and was left eagerly awaiting Sarah Addison Allen's next novel.
- Eileen Goudge, author of Women in Red

There is magic in Sarah Addison Allen's GARDEN SPELLS, and not all of it involves the supernatural. Much of the novel's power comes in the form of the very human story of two sisters who, as grown women, find their way into each other's hearts for the first time. GARDEN SPELLS is enchanting in the purest sense.
- Jean Reynolds Page, author of Accidental Happiness

GARDEN SPELLS is a rare and mesmerizing novel, brimming with light and fierce joy and the sharp shadows that must accompany such a tale. I desperately want to go live in Bascom and fall asleep in the Waverley's garden and let the magic and sweetness fill my every hour with its heady sense of possibility. So will you. This is one of the of the most charming books I've read in ages!
- Barbara Samuel, author of Madame Mirabou's School of Love