12.6.2013 | Friday

Waking Kate

Item: Waking Kate
Rating: 5
Author: Kim

category: Book Reviews
tag(s): adult
0 Comments

title: Waking Kate
author: Sarah Addison Allen
series: Lost Lake #.5
published: 3 December 2013
publisher: St. Martin's Press
genre(s): fantasy, magical realism
pages: 15
source: bought
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | BookBub | StoryGraph | Goodreads

rating:

| series rating:

the blurb

From the beloved author of Garden Spells, comes Waking Kate, a story about a woman who soon will face an unforseen change in her life. One sticky summer day as Kate is waiting for her husband to come home from his bicycle shop, she spots her distinguished neighbor returning from his last day of work after eighty-six years at Atlanta’s oldest men’s clothing store. Over a cup of butter coffee, he tells Kate a story of love and heartbreak that makes her remember her past, question her present, and wonder what the future will bring.

my review

I have been in love with Sarah Addison Allen’s work since her debut novel, Garden Spells. The themes of her books are not light, but somehow she writes the stories of her characters in mystical, whimsical, and magical ways. Her writing is just beautiful.

Waking Kate is a very short read, a prequel to the soon-to-be released Lost Lake. We meet Kate, a wife and mother who seems to be at a crossroads in her life. We don’t really find out what that is, clearly something that will be revealed in Lost Lake. She seems to be unsettled, feeling in her heart and soul that life is what is seemed or maybe should be with her husband. She goes through a bit of a transformation during a conversation with an elderly neighbor, but, in true Allen style, we are left wondering about that conversation. Did it really take place or is it something she dreamed. A nice lead-in to the new book!

A must read for fans of Sarah Addison Allen! It is free and it is short and a wonderful lead-in to the highly anticipated Lost Lake.

About Sarah Addison Allen

New York Times Bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen brings the full flavor of her southern upbringing to bear on her fiction — a captivating blend of magical realism, heartwarming romance, and small-town sensibility.

Born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Allen grew up with a love of books and an appreciation of good food (she credits her journalist father for the former and her mother, a fabulous cook, for the latter). In college, she majored in literature — because, as she puts it, “I thought it was amazing that I could get a diploma just for reading fiction. It was like being able to major in eating chocolate.”

After graduation, Allen began writing seriously. Her big break occurred in 2007 with the publication of her first mainstream novel, Garden Spells, a modern-day fairy tale about an enchanted apple tree and the family of North Carolina women who tend it. Booklist called Allen’s accomplished debut “spellbindingly charming.” The novel became a Barnes & Noble Recommends selection, and then a New York Times Bestseller.

Allen continues to serve heaping helpings of the fantastic and the familiar in fiction she describes as “Southern-fried magic realism.” Clearly, it’s a recipe readers are happy to eat up as fast as she can dish it out.

::spread the love::