Release Date: August 12/2014
Adquired: Print copy provided by Publisher
Goodreads: ADD
Purchase: Amazon/Indigo/Book Depository
As beguiling as the novels of Alice Hoffman, Adriana Trigiani, Aimee Bender, and Sarah Addison Allen, Season of the Dragonflies is a story of flowers, sisters, practical magic, old secrets, and new love, set in the Blue Ridge Mountains
For generations, the Lenore women have manufactured a perfume unlike any other, and guarded the unique and mysterious ingredients. Their perfumery, hidden in the quiet rolling hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, creates one special elixir that secretly sells for millions of dollars to the world's most powerful-movie stars, politicians, artists, and CEOs. The Lenore's signature perfume is actually the key to their success.
Willow, the coolly elegant Lenore family matriarch, is the brains behind the company. Her gorgeous, golden-haired daughter Mya is its heart. Like her foremothers, she can "read" scents and envision their power. Willow's younger daughter, dark-haired, soulful Lucia, claims no magical touch, nor does she want any part of the family business. She left the mountains years ago to make her own way. But trouble is brewing. Willow is experiencing strange spells of forgetfulness. Mya is plotting a coup. A client is threatening blackmail. And most ominously, the unique flowers used in their perfume are dying.
Whoever can save the company will inherit it. Though Mya is the obvious choice, Lucia has begun showing signs of her own special abilities. And her return to the mountains-heralded by a swarm of blue dragonflies-may be the answer they all need.
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Think, Practical Magic. Minus Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Minus the possession and the super-handy ability to light a candle by blowing on it. The ladies in Season of the Dragonflies dealt in scents, in perfume, to be exact. I enjoyed the magic realism aspect of this book, and appreciated the fact that it made me nostalgic about one of my all-time favourite movies, but completely capture me, it did not. Too predictable, too neatly tied-up, too much running-around-but-not-actually-GOING-anywhere happening.
The run down: an enticing Prologue, a curious flower is found, a legacy is born. Skip forward three generations, a Lenore daughter is returning to her hometown of Quartz Hollow (loved this name), after a particularly depressing bout of roughing it on her own. After a failed marriage, and minimal job options, Lucia returns to her mother Willow, and sister Mya, in hopes of recapturing peace-as ALL those who return home, in novels, tend to seek. Lo and behold, she slowly creeps out of her funk, rekindles a love from her teenage years (gasp! didn't see THAT coming..no but, I did), and attempts to quell the family troubles that were brewing while she was away.
I wouldn't exactly deem Season of the Dragonflies a "comforting read," as there were some tense moments, and characters that I, more often than not, wanted to strangle, namely Mya Lenore. However, it was fast-paced in nature, and boasted a pretty cool concept: a specific flower with magical properties, capable of propelling the careers and allure of woman. These woman used the flower in it's perfume form, provided by the Lenore family, and all was fantastically well up until the moment a client decided to breach her contract. I definitely enjoyed the story happening in front of my face, the love and life stories of the Lenore women, rather than the almost unnecessary sub-story happening in Hollywood. I understood that essentially, one story needed the other, to exist as a whole, but I just couldn't bring myself to CARE about what happened with the starlets who wore, and were abusing, the perfume.
I was most wrapped up in Lucia's story, and the love-hate relationship she carried on with her sister, Mya. The author did a fantastic job of creating such distinct personalities for the two. I was able to picture them clearly in my minds eye, and felt Mya's angst as clearly as I might feel my own. It was their story, and the refreshingly luscious town of Quartz Hollow that kept me reading a book that I would otherwise not have picked up for myself.
A great read for anyone that wants an added touch of something more in their fiction, a tinge of the unexplained, if you will. But just a tinge.
Recommended for Fans of: Women's fiction, Contemporary, Sarah Addison Allen, The Taste of Apple Seeds by Katharina Hagena, magic realism.
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Born and raised in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Sarah Creech grew up in a house full of women who told stories about black cloud visions and other premonitions. Her work has appeared in storySouth, Literary Mama, Aroostook Review, Glass, and as a finalist for Glimmer Train.
She received an MFA from McNeese State University in 2008 and now teaches English and creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte. She currently lives in North Carolina with her two children and her husband, a poet. This is her first novel.
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Thank-you to Trish from TLC Book Tours for hosting this tour, and to William Morrow for sending me a print ARC to review!
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