Spells for Forgetting

July 11, 2022
In Young’s atmospheric adult debut (after the Fable YA duology), “deep magic” runs in the women of Saoirse, a fictional island in Puget Sound. After high school graduation, Emery Blackwood hopes to move away with her boyfriend, August Salt, but when the island’s orchard burns to the ground on the same night that Emery’s best friend, Lily Morgan, is mysteriously killed, their plans to leave the next morning are aborted. All signs point to August as the culprit behind Lily’s death, but there’s not enough evidence to charge him, and he and his mother flee Saoirse, leaving Emery to take over her family’s tea shop, which dispenses “mystical brews” to help with love and luck. Now, 14 years later, August returns to Saoirse to bury his mother and sell her cottage. August’s return raises questions about what actually happened all those years ago, and it appears every islander is hiding a piece of the puzzle. The plot is convoluted, but Young entrances with the island’s witchy vibes, and makes palpable the unfinished childhood love story between Emery and August, which comes back to life after his return. Despite the bumps, Young casts a spell that will keep readers turning the pages. Barbara Poelle, Irene Goodman Literary.

August 1, 2022
Debut adult novel from the bestselling author of The Last Legacy (2021) and Namesake (2021). August Salt was 18 when he was accused of murdering his friend Lily Morgan. No longer welcome on Saoirse, the tiny Pacific Northwest island where they lived, he and his mother moved to the mainland, changed their last name, and started a new life. Fourteen years later, his mother's insistence that her ashes be buried on her ancestral home sends him back to a place he didn't expect to see again. For most of Saoirse's residents, his return is unwelcome. For Emery Blackwood, it stirs up feelings she's spent her whole adult life trying to suppress. An isolated community, an unsolved mystery, long-buried secrets coming to light: This is a classic setup for psychological suspense or gothic horror, and this story offers a bit of both. But it also offers a little something extra: The women of Saoirse are witches. Young has written several young adult novels full of invention, adventure, and sorcery. By the end of this novel, though, it's hard to escape the conclusion that she decided writing for grown-ups means combining a dour, lifeless tone with a plot that barely moves. And there's something almost perverse about a narrative with a witch protagonist being so miserly with magic. The central tensions driving the story are pretty simple. Neither Emery nor August has ever recovered from the abrupt end of their youthful romance. Lily's murderer has never been found. The people of Saoirse are worried that August will try to reclaim the orchard that his grandfather left to the community. Saoirse is a place unlike any other. The most compelling of these--the mystery surrounding Lily's death, the unique nature of the island--get the least attention. August and Emery only decide to investigate their friend's murder late in the novel. And, despite every first-person narrator here assuring us that Saoirse is a singular place with its own rules, the island comes across like any other small, insular place that depends on a seasonal tourism industry--sporadic acts of witchcraft notwithstanding. Hovers awkwardly between YA fantasy/romance and magical realism for grown-ups.

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August 1, 2022
It is around 500 CE, and two Saxon sisters, 20-year-old Isla and her 17-year-old sister, Blue, live with their father, The Great Smith, on an island in the Thames across from the abandoned Roman city of Londinium. Isla has a deathly secret: she works in the forge with her father making forbidden magical swords for the Overlord Osric. When the sisters' father dies unexpectedly, Isla determines they should ask Osric for kin protection, but when they manage to reach his palace, they run afoul of his vile son, Vort, and must flee, encountering a young woman named Senna along the way. They soon find themselves in the Rookery, a sequestered community consisting almost exclusively of women. Though they are welcomed warmly, and Isla falls in love with Senna, they still wonder if they should travel farther north to escape Vort. Isla favors flight, but Blue demurs, and her sister will not leave without her. Can this impasse be resolved? Stott has done a remarkable job of re-creating post-Roman England, perfect in its verisimilitude. She is a wonderful writer, too, creating memorable characters and scenes of heart-pounding suspense. The richly imagined Rookery is a small peaceable kingdom that will be threatened by Vort who, bent on revenge, is searching for Isla and Blue. Will he find them? Read on, reader; read on...

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August 1, 2022
Generations of Blackwood women have lived on Saoirse Island, working spells from a spell book and herbarium passed down from mother to daughter. Fourteen years ago, Emery Blackwood tried to leave the island, but her attempt was thwarted by the tragic death of her best friend, Lily. The circumstances surrounding Lily's death are mysterious--she was found in the middle of a fire in the island's orchard, drowned by seawater. The close-knit islanders believe that the person behind Lily's death was August Salt, Emery's boyfriend, who conveniently left town with his mother soon after. Now August has returned to bury his mother's ashes, reopening old wounds and bringing long-buried secrets to the surface. In her adult debut, Young spins a tale of an insular community struggling to come to terms with the past. Although much of the story is told from Emery's perspective, Young includes chapters told from the point of view of other islanders, showing their reactions to August's return as well as the long-standing mystery of Lily's death. The twists, turns, and hints of magic will appeal to fans of Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic series.

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