First Frost by Sarah Addison Allen

First Frost 

Sarah Addison Allen

St Martin's Press

January 2015

If you have read Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen, you must read First Frost. If you have not read Garden Spells, read it at once and then grab First Frost and stay in touch with the Waverley sisters.

I love the Waverleys.  Claire Waverly, the older, onetime alone sister and Sydney, her more flamboyant younger sister again show us that being true to yourself and the tribe you come from is most important.

 In First Frost, Claire and Sydney have found men that love them as they are, even if that is just a little bit quirky.  And as Autumn approaches both sisters are feeling a bit unsettled. Claire’s successful catering business has taken a back seat to a new venture, Candy Making. And it’s making her crazy. She’s good at it, it is adding to daughter Mariah’s college fund, but she is unsatisfied. Sydney’s salon, The White Door, is successful too. She and her husband Henry, own a dairy farm, away from town a bit but that is not what is bothering Sydney. She wants another baby, a son for Henry. Yes, they have Bay, her daughter from her first marriage to David, but Bay is 15 and finding her own Waverley gifts as she navigates high school. Sydney is desperate for a baby.

The residents of Bascom NC keep their distance from the Waverley house and the garden which houses the apple tree which blossoms at first frost and then makes hundreds of apples. Apples, which the tree happily throws at anyone who dares to interfere in the mysterious, endearing lives of the Waverley women. Come revisit Claire and Sydney, Bay and Mariah as they find out that family, above all, is the answer to the disturbing prelude to the first frost of the season.

This is the third of Sarah Addison Allen's books I have read. I will read the rest. I read The Sugar Queen first and liked it a lot. Then I picked up Garden Spells and was spellbound. I had to read First Frost because it was more about the Waverley women. Now I will read The Peach Keeper, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, and Lost Lake and any more I can get my hands on. 

Judy