Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Author I Love: Sarah Addison Allen



A few weeks ago I finished reading all of Sarah Addison Allen's books. She has four published right now and I flew through them. The stories were so good that I could not put them down. I would even tell my friends that my favorite part of the day was going to home and reading while munching on some girl scout cookies. What can I say, that is my idea of a good time.

As I was finishing her most recent book called The Peach Keeper I snapped a few photos of some of my favorite quotes from the story.

 "Happiness is a risk. If you're not a little scared, then you're not doing it right."

"Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss."
"Most of her lists were about control, about breaking her life into manageable pieces. But some of the lists were simply wishes. There was nothing more satisfying than putting what you wanted most onto paper. It gave substance to something that was before as thin as air. It made it one step closer to being real."

I could not agree more with all of these quotes. Happiness can be scary and sometimes I have to tell myself that it will be worth it in the end. Childhood is a lovely time in life and I don't think you truely appreciate it until you are no longer a child. The quote about lists felt like she knew exactly what was in my head. I love lists, they bring order to life which in turn makes it not so overwhelming. I also love what she said about lists giving life to wishes and making them real. I have definitely been known to write a few lists like that in my life as well (bucket list anyone?)

Besides The Peach Keeper, the other three books by Sarah Addison Allen are Garden Spells, The Sugar Queen, and The Girl Who Chased The Moon. I can't tell you which is my favorite because I enjoyed them all so much. If I had to put these stories into a category I would call them magical realism love stories. Not romance, I wouldn't go that far, but each story had two sets of couples dealing with some sort of love related issue and a magic realism element that gave the book a good twist. 

Sarah Addison has a new book coming out later this year (soexcitedcantwaittoreadit!) but the rest of her work is so captivating that I will probably re-read these stories in a few years. I would recommend her work if you enjoyed The Night Circus, anything by Nicholas Sparks and/or Harry Potter (because obviously Harry Potter is the best magic realism book in the history of magic realism.)

So, have you read any of these books? Do you have any recommendations for other magic realism stories I might enjoy? What are you reading lately?

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