Cover Image: The Book Charmer

The Book Charmer

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Member Reviews

I love Sarah Addison Allen and Menna van Praag’s magical realism and family stories, so I was excited to request The Book Charmer. Despite the promising premise and nice opening, I did not enjoy this book. Sarah’s book-charmer gift wasn’t integral to the story and I found the storylines thin.

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Loved, loved, loved this book! Thank you so much for the ARC. I loved the characters, town, and story. Can’t wait to follow along in these characters’ lives.

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While this was not the typical genre I read, I found this story quite charming.
The characters were good and written well, the story unique, and I found myself enjoying this book for the most part.

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A book about a small southern town, books and a librarian is right down my alley. All three have been part of my life. I found the book delightful and loved every minute reading it. Thanks for this opportunity.

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The Book Charmer is a story of one little girl , and her sister, who is passed from foster home to foster home until they find Mama G. Grace, the main character, goes on to college and a successful career, but gives it all up to come home to care for Mama G. when she becomes ill. They return to the town of Mama G’s birth, where the majority of the story takes place. It is a beautiful and heartwarming tale of what is really important in life...home, family, friends.

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I fell in love with this book! It has the trials and emotions of real life - angst, romance, sadness, and joy. The characters deal with real life issues - sisters, family members with dementia, children who have lost parents, war wounds, and the need to make a living while juggling all the pieces. It also has quirkiness - all the diverse characters in a small town - a family of magical sisters, a wacky mayor, and a wise old woman that everyone loves. I was totally charmed by The Book Charmer and you will be too!

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Magic. That's what this book was. The story. The characters. The town of Dove Pond. So many emotions experienced in one book and I wouldn't have had it any other way. I'm a huge Sarah Addison Allen fan and Karen Hawkins is right up there with her in style, storytelling and imagination. It was just exactly what it was supposed to be and I am so looking forward to diving back into another magical story crafted around Dove Pond.

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Magical realism at it's finest. If you love Sarah Addison Allen, you must read this book.
The setting is Dove Pond, NC, a charming Southern town that is truly a main character in the story. Sarah Dove, who's ancestors founded Dove Pond is the town librarian and books speak to her in a very real (and magical) way. It operates on the belief that the right book finds you at the right time and Sarah is the facilitator in making that happen.
Dove Pond has gone the way of many small towns that have lost businesses and families to the bustling city. Sarah is determined to reverse that path with the help of her friends.
Heartwarming and heartbreaking...I finished it in one sitting.

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Charming is a perfect description for The Book Charmer. This lovely novel tackles trust, pain, and love in the town of Dove Pond, NC.

Grace Wheeler and her sister Hannah have been bounced from home to home. They’re about to land at the one last chance they have before the system will split them up and send Grace to a group home. Mrs. Giano, better known as Mama G, will take a look at them and decide if she’s willing to tackle the demons that rest inside Grace.

All grown up, a bit later, Grace is now responsible for Mama G and Hannah’s daughter Daisy. Mama G is struggling with the early stages of Alzheimers, and Daisy needs a fresh start. Giving up her dreams of success in the financial industry, Grace moves the patched together family to Mama G’s birthplace of Dove Pond. Dove Pond offers a chance for Mama G to be in a place that feels safe, even if it doesn’t afford Grace the job or future she’d intended.

Meanwhile, Dove Pond has its own set of issues. When Grace takes over the job of town clerk, she uncovers a mess that could take the town down. Working with a feckless mayor who thinks his primary job is fishing and glad-handing, and being the new girl in town, she’s about to take on a challenge any bigger than she’s ever had. Will Grace be able to handle the changes? And will she let anyone in to help her?

Karen Hawkins has written such a beautiful novel of love. Grace and Daisy are both somewhat broken, and find themselves in a place of magic in Dove Pond. Neither wants to let anyone in, too many trust issues, but the magic of Dove Pond can’t help but work its way into their hearts. The author deals with the realities of Alzheimers and what it’s like to live with someone you love when their mind is slipping. Also, how the foster system can break and heal those broken by it. She has created a place that anyone would want to pull up stakes and move to.

Not sure if Dove Pond will be a series (it does say book #1) but I truly would love to know more about the town and the residents. Dove Pond will be a place I want to visit again and again. The Book Charmer and it’s hometown have charmed me, as I’m sure it will charm others.

This review will be posted at BookwormishMe.com close to publication date.

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What a heartwarming story! I loved the character of Grace and adored Sarah!!
I know this is going to be a series, and I can't wait! I need to know about the book!!!
This is what I like to call a quick, feel good read. Thank you NetGalley!!

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Simply charming! I want to move to Dove Pond.

My only quibble would be that, with the title character being a librarian, we sure didn't get to spend much time in the library!

*Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

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This was a great story. I was hooked from page one. The only thing I disliked was that the book ended. This story could of gone on and on. Hopefully she will continue the story in another book. I enjoyed the characters, the setting and the "books". Definitely a title I didn't want to put down.

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THE BOOK CHARMER - Karen Hawkins

Dove Pond, North Carolina - Present Day

The small, friendly town of Dove Pond has the reputation of having great bar-b-que, an Apple Festival that attracts people from all over, and amazing good luck whenever the Dove family has seven daughters. Thankfully, there are seven Dove girls these days because, right now, Dove Pond is in dire need of that luck. Will the magic that inhabits each daughter, especially the seventh one, save their hometown?

Sarah Dove is the town librarian, which is a good thing because books "talk" to her, literally. And the one that has talked the most during her lifetime has been the very old book written by, like Sarah, a seventh Dove daughter back in the early 1700s. Strange things are happening in her home town. Siegfried, a town cat, is doing counterclockwise circles before every store on Main Street. Then Sarah noticed that the flowers in the town planters have been changing colors. They were purple when planted, but every so often they turn different colors. When the town fountain began running again after fifty years of it being broken, Sarah knew something was going to happen. She already knows her town is slowly dying, with stores closing, people moving away to find jobs, and a brief glimpse of the latest budget showing that financial issues are going to crush them. So, when Sarah's books tell her that the new town clerk will be important to Dove Pond, she knows she has to act.

Grace Wheeler has had to leave her lucrative, high pressure job in Charlotte and move to Dove Pond where she will be the town clerk for a miserably low salary. But, with the death of her younger sister, Hannah, and having to take over raising Daisy, Hannah's eight-year-old daughter, not to mention caring for her elderly foster mother, Mama G, Grace has moved them to a rental house in Mama G's home town. The old woman is showing signs of dementia, Daisy is still reeling from losing her mother, despite Hannah's chronic absences, and Grace is coming to terms with being a mother and care-giver. To say she has a chip on her shoulder is putting it mildly. She will stay in town for one year, then move them all to Charlotte where Grace can earn a respectable living. In the mean time, she must deal with a town mayor who puts fishing before Dove Pond, Sarah Dove who is just way too friendly, and a motorcycle riding, macho guy living next door.

Many in the town are well aware that the new town clerk isn't happy to be in Dove Pond. But when she's thrown into the "Social Club" by the mayor to plan the Apple Festival, Grace alienates just about everyone. For Grace has gone over the financial records of the town, and it is on the verge of bankruptcy. Spending money on a, to Grace, frivolous fair just makes no sense. So she slashes the fair budget and sets the town atwitter. Sarah and others understand, but the one thing that puts Dove Pond on the map is that Apple Festival. How will Sarah and friends manage to convince Grace of its importance? Can the Dove family magic overcome everything that is going wrong? The future of Dove Pond is at stake.

Any book that can make me laugh out loud and wipe tears from my eyes is a darned good book. And THE BOOK CHARMER does it all with its beautifully written prose, enchanting, all-too-human characters, and that bit of magic that only books can transcend to readers. It's a Perfect 10 in every way. Do not miss this delightful novel.

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I liked this book - the concept is very fun. I only wish the idea of a book charmer would've been used in a slightly different manner than a small town plot/story. I also wish everything had been just a bit 'more' in the novel (more romance, more magic, more diversity). Although there are still a few editing errors, it's a nice enough read, even if I found myself skimming through passages.

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Being a librarian's child I had such high hopes and I was severely disappointed. Not only does this book fail to deliver on it's mystical premise, but it also has no real interest to save it, no climax or any particular reason to keep reading. The magical elements are there in the corners, but not in any way a major factor in the story, and everything else in the book is similarly disjointed. The book isn't really about the Book Charmer at all, but about a different character, and just as that storyline is oddly left behind, so are many others. I would love to see a completely new version of this book fixing all of its problems, but as it stands I wouldn't recommend it. :-(

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A cozy small town book with a hint of magic, this was a lovely spring read (and will be an equally lovely summer read).

Though titled The Book Charmer, Sarah, the librarian with whom books speaks is not really the main character. She's important to the story, but she takes second seat to Grace, who has the main story arc.

It begins with both girls when young, setting their background, then shifts to the present day when go-getter Grace, who has never had a friend, finds herself the guardian not only of her sister's abandoned child, but the foster mom who finally gave her a sense of stability. Only her beloved Mama G is sinking slowly into the twilight world of dementia.

This was a tad on the nose for me (currently dealing with two elders with dementia) but for the most part the handling was sensitively done. At one point it looked like Hawkins was going to descend into the mawkish sentiment of bad cancer stories, in which the character gets the magic of "specialness" through their disease) but she backed off that.

The characters are well drawn, especially the older women. Hawkins is especially good with giving these women agency, even Mama G in her lucid moments.

Grace is quite well done, and though Sarah's story is left for future volumes, Grace's comes to a satisfying resolution, leaving the reader wanting to know more about the town and its serious dilemma, and the other characters.

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What a sweet story! I'm not generally a fan of books categorized as "romances" but this one was worth reading...actually, any book that has a good librarian and books that talk as characters is worth reading <smile>. Young adults should also like this book.

Plot: A family stung by an unexpected suicide moves to a tiny Southern town to try to heal before stepping back into city life. The lead character is very determined and very prickly. She pushes away anyone who tries to befriend her but the child and grandmother are instrumental in changing that. Throw in a shy but good looking, motorcycle riding man, a cast of small town characters, and a kind lady with dementia and you have a recipe for a good story.

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The book is well, a charming book. Set in a small town in NC, the overarching story is that of the Dove family, mainly Sarah Dove. The family has "special gifts" that allows them to help people, and this book's focus is on Sarah's... or so I thought. But then the story turned out to be mainly about the new arrivals to the town. Personally, this sort of threw me off at first but I got over it quickly because the author managed to create a quirky cast of characters that are delightful and will make you wish you lived in Dove Pond.

The book is a feel-good gem fill with that special magic that you associate with authors like Sarah Addison Allen. But what I really loved about this book was how it tackled issues that are so common in daily lives like health issues, PTSD, and caring for the elderly. The author did beautifully exploring these issues with clarity, grace, compassion and even humor-- which is sometimes needed in these situations. I love a book where the character grow and develop as the story goes and this is where The Book Charmer shines because as they develop, you can't help falling in love with them. Which is why I was a bit deflated with the book ending (and why I only gave it 4 stars)-- it felt rushed and like the status of the romantic couple was left in the air. That being said, I noticed that the book is labeled as The Book Charmer (Dove Pond #1) and after searching realized there is a second book, in which case, the ending makes more sense. I am now eagerly waiting for it because the ending of The Book Charmer left me with questions about the future of the residents of Dove Pond.
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This book was the first I've read of Karen Hawkins. I liked the magical realism as it wasn't too heavy handed. I'd love to visit this small town and meet its quirky inhabitants. I'm glad to see there is another title in this series to be published next month.

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A very nice book by Karen Hawkins. I’ve never read a book by this author before so I wasn't sure what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the story and the characters.

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