Ivy Jacobs isn't allowed to read books in her community. Yet, she gets her hands on a copy of The Scarlet Letter, and it leads her on a journey of heartbreak, love, and self discovery.

This book is a powerful commentary on current events, the reality that many groups think they can dictate what we read and how we think. Very well written, poignant characters, and so much to read between the lines. Food for thought - this book specifically, but isn't that what all books are supposed to be? Absolutely loved this one! ❤️

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced digital reader's copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review!

The writing in this book is so beautiful and eloquent. I was roped into the story immediately. Reading about Ivy needing to leave her home, being let down by the man who impregnated her, and her own father was heartbreaking to begin with. Once she fell into the arms of Joel Davis, she didn’t have a chance. Men continuously let women in the society down. Seeing Mia come up with Ivy guiding her, sometimes from afar, and protecting her was so moving. I found the switch to the magical realism well set up. But the actual ending of the book and the impact that she ended up having on him was surprising to me.

The queen of magical realism, Alice Hoffman, returns with an enchanting tale, THE INVISIBLE HOUR —a woman and her daughter in a commune find comfort in books, magical storytelling, a mystical journey, and time travel with a literary twist.

Ivy Jacob's parents are unhappy about her teen pregnancy, and she has few options—she runs from Boston to Western Massachusetts to The Community, a modern-day cult. She gives birth to Mia and marries the group's controlling leader, Joel, when Mia is three months old. The rules are strict, and members are branded with letters. There is to be no contact with the outside world.

At age 16, Mia secretly takes out books from a nearby library (forbidden in The Community). She wants to escape and tries to get her mom to do so.

The Scarlet Letter was written almost two hundred years earlier. Still, it seems to tell the story of Mia’s mother, Ivy, and their life inside the Community—where contact with the outside world is forbidden, and books are considered evil. But how could this be? How could Nathaniel Hawthorne have so perfectly captured the pain and loss that Mia carries inside her?

Mia becomes obsessed with The Scarlet Letter (her favorite) after finding a first edition mysteriously inscribed, To Mia. She escapes the Community. Under the instruction of Constance Allen and Sarah Mott, a loving couple of lesbian librarians in Concord (where Hawthorne is buried), she later becomes a librarian, but Joel is still out there; the evil community leader continues to hunt and taunt her.

One day, while visiting Hawthorne’s grave, she wishes to meet the author. Mia finds solace and inspiration in a hidden book, The Scarlet Letter, which empowers her to shape her future. From alternating POV— Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing life in the mid-19th century and a series of time-traveling twists with the inspiration for The Scarlet Letter.

We jump to time traveling back to 1837 Salem with Hawthorne, a struggling writer. What happens next? Mia learns that time is more fluid than she can imagine and that love is stronger than any chains that bind you.

As a girl, Mia fell in love with a book. Now as a young woman, she falls in love with a brilliant writer as she makes her way back in time. But what if Nathaniel Hawthorne never wrote The Scarlet Letter? And what if Mia Jacob never found it on the day she planned to die? A journey of discovery. The book takes a drastic turn about halfway when it turns to time travel.

A book within a book, THE INVISIBLE HOUR, is captivating!

A remarkable mix of literary, magical realism, fantasy, time travel, and the love of books. From themes of survival, family, a mother's love, choices, the empowerment of women, the love of reading, and the joy of storytelling.

Thanks to Atria Books for a gifted ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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My Rating: 4 Stars
Pub Date: Aug 15, 2023
Aug 2023 Must-Read Books

Alice Hoffman is such a truly gifted author - her words and the stories they weave are truly remarkable. I am pleased to have been allowed to preview this book, and I admit, it did not disappoint.

I am not sure how I would describe the book, however. The beginning of the story captivated me; a young girl (Ivy) who breaks free of the restrictive bonds of her parents world, and ends up in enmeshed inside a cult that is far more stifling her home life ever could have been. Her child (Mia) experiences a vastly different life than Ivy's raised within the strict confines of the community.. Ivy loved books and learning more than anything in her growing up; Mia is not allowed, by rules of the community, but one day she stumbles into the local town library, and forms a friendship with the librarian. From there, things take a lot of different twists and turns, including time travel, romance, intrigue and Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter.

It is not my favorite of Alice Hoffman's books, yet I am so pleased to have read it in exchange for a review. The book has some truly poetic thoughts and expressions, and experiencing both Ivy and Mia's lives has been a great experience.

I loved The Invisible Hour. Alice Hoffman is one of my favorite authors and like so many of her other books (all the ones I’ve read so far, which is many), this book is just delicious.

I was immediately drawn in to the story and couldn’t put it down. I loved the letter to the reader in the beginning and really appreciated learning a few things about Ms. Hoffman’s life. Her writing is so eloquent as she describes the relationship between the author and the reader: “A book doesn’t live when it’s written. It lives when it’s read.”

The Invisible Hour is like a love letter to book readers. The main character, in my opinion, is a book - The Scarlet Letter. The theme is the power of books and specifically tells the story of how a book can change a person’s life. The Scarlet Letter literally saves the life of our main protagonist, Mia. It is a gripping read that is written by a masterful storyteller with a extraordinary imagination that I am grateful for.

Both the characters and the relationships are extremely well-defined. There is an element of magical realism, present in many Hoffman books. I must confess that while I’ve read many, I have not yet read them all. There is something comforting knowing that there are a few books written by Alice Hoffman that I still have yet to read. I seem to be saving them - I guess I cannot imagine life without an Alice Hoffman book “waiting in the wings,” to be read.

The time travel angle adds an element of surprise that is necessary to the story and I have no problems with it. Don’t all or many books require us to suspend our disbelief to a degree?

Besides the power of books and the love of reading, other themes include love, family, sacrifice and survival. The story also deals with issues that faced women in 1800s that are just as relevant today — single motherhood and a woman’s control over her body.

The Invisible Hour is one of Ms. Hoffman’s best, although I often say that about her books. The writing, as always, is beautiful and lyrical. I highly recommend The Invisible Hour.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

I have loved several of Alice Hoffman's books. But the fantasy element on The Invisible Hour doesn’t work very well for me. May is able to travel back in time to meet Nathaniel Hawhorne, but her abusive stepfather is able to follow her there, even though he doesn’t have the magical copy of The Scarlet Letter. I think the story would have been better without time travel; the realistic portion of the story is quite good.

This beautifully written, complex and multi-layered story is about love, self-discovery, the magic of reading and its' power to change our lives.

Mia Jacob is a young girl raised in an oppressive cult in Blackwell, Massachusetts where children are separated from their mothers, all females are subjugated to the men, talking to outsiders is forbidden, reading is banned, and rules are strictly enforced. She runs away and hides in the town's library where she is befriended by the librarian. The leader of the cult is determined to bring her back and use her as an example to the other children. Feeling suicidal and that she'll never be free of the cult, she runs away again with a book taken from the library. When she is tired from running, she stops to rest and becomes entranced with The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne, seeing it as her mother's own story. But how did the author get everything so accurate? Mia decides she wants to live and with help from the librarian begins to learn to live outside of the cult. As she does, she rereads the book time and again.

The more she reads it, the more in love she feels with its' author, and one night finds herself magically transported to his time and place. Hoffman's talent for magical realism again shines in this part of the book. Time travelers know the inherent dangers involved in interacting with those of a previous time period. Anything said or done can create a ripple effect that could change outcomes so that the present as we know it might not happen. Oh, the angst!

Hoffman's prosaic writing and her ability to bring scenes to life and put her reader right into them makes this a wonderfully satisfying read. I absolutely loved Mia's character and her story, finishing it in a day. I highly recommend this book!

My thanks to Atria Books for allowing me to read a DRC of this novel via NetGalley. It is scheduled for release on 8/15/23. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and are freely given.

Thank you to @netgalley & @atriabooks for early access to this ebook. It publishes next week on 8/15!

This is now the second book I’ve read based on The Scarlet Letter – I book I have not read LOL. I read Hester last year and enjoyed it a lot. This one was different because instead of being a reimagining, it had a bit of a magical realism twist that found the FMC traveling back in time.

The first part started off promising. It focuses on Ivy, a young girl who gets pregnant and runs off to “The Community” (AKA a rural cult). There she has her daughter (the book’s FMC), Mia. When tragedy strikes, Mia (age 15) is intent on getting away. So, she runs.

The next part is where things started to go downhill for me. We go back in time to when Nathaniel Hawthorne is alive before he has written TSL – a book that means everything to Mia. This part felt disjointed and honestly, boring. Lots of nature depictions and mundane internal dialogue from Nathaniel. Not much happens until the end, but even that was nothing to write home about.

The book is full of repetition, some on purpose and some I think is due to a lack of thorough editing, and I just couldn’t get into it. I loved Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman (the other 3 books in the series were okay), but I think maybe she was a one-hit-wonder for me.

Wow, this book was so beautiful and enchanting. I absolutely loved the plot of this book and how the future affected the past and the past affected the future and everyone in it. The first half was thrilling and exciting and it made me despise Joel and the Community, and it made me feel so bad for Ivy and what she went through just to find someone who loved her. I felt even worse for Mia because she was seemingly left alone after her mom died, but she ended up finding a new family in Sarah and Constance, which I loved. But Joel just couldn't get over the fact that she escaped and wouldn't stop until he got her back. The trip to the past was so unexpected that I could hardly believe it. I loved that she fell in love with Nathaniel and that they were able to love each other even though it was fleeting. I absolutely loved that her story about her and her mother gave him the idea about the Scarlett Letter and that would in turn save her. It was enchanting and beautiful and I loved Mia and how she was portrayed. Perfection.

Ivy feels like she has no one, at a time when she needs someone the most. It is then that she finds "The Community." This place and these people will be her new family, along with the baby growing inside her. As her daughter Mia grows, she realizes there is more to life outside of The Community. One day, she is able to sneak into the library while Community members are at the farmers market selling goods they have grown. Inside the library, she finds the "more" she has been looking for. She begins sneaking books by to the Community, even though they are forbidden, she makes friends with the librarian. And one day she realizes that the librarian is the person that can help her the most. After finding a copy of The Scarlet Letter with an unusual inscription her life changes. But what if something happened in the 1800's that cause Nathaniel Hawthorne to not write The Scarlet Letter? Where would that leave Mia?

This review may contain spoilers!

Ok....so if the rest of the book was like Part 1, I would have easily given it 5 stars. However, Part 2 totally changed my mind. 3 stars. The time travel in Part 2 was just a bit much and just was a bit too unrealistic when compared to how well Part 1 was written. Part 3 was a mix of Part 1 and Part 2, so was better, but still just didn't seem to fit right.

It almost seemed like the author was trying to cover lots of different genres, when maybe if she had stuck with one it would have been fantastic. This was my first read by this author, so if this is typically her style then maybe I need to rethink my view of this novel. Also, and this is probably just me - but the subtle political views on women's choice could probably have been left out. It was meant to be subtle, but seemed to really stick out and was a put off for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for a digital ARC! I was really excited and honored to be able to read this ARC!

4.5 stars rounded up!
I love books about books that are written for those of us who love books. Beautiful imagery. Felt magical with very little actual magic. Alice Hoffman’s writing makes you feel something. I’ve always wanted to read her work but haven’t gotten to it yet in my large tbr pile. That’s why I’m so grateful for the ARC. I know this is my preferred writing style. This is how I like to feel while reading a book; enchanted, whimsical, with a bit of danger. I love books that tell the story without rambling on, and this book does just that. It’s short but without leaving anything out. It is a story about finding your voice, in the midst of men trying to remove all choice from a woman’s life. And it’s a story about a mother’s love for her daughter.

So many great quotes in this novel. Her are some of my favorites:

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see”

“once a girl walked into a library she could never be controlled again.”

“Herein are a thousand different doors, and a thousand different lives, turn the page and you open the door.”

If you loved The Scarlet Letter growing up, you will love this book. The way this book talks about books. It’s everything I feel but haven’t been able to articulate. Hoffman has the most gorgeous writing style. I must read more of her books!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for their ARC (new edition release) in exchange for an honest review. This was a gem.

I loved Hoffman’s newest. I truly believe that Alice Hoffman will be considered a classic. This novel would be a great read in the fall, for sure.

Mia has grown up in an isolated community where books are banned but she found a way to fall in love with them. She finds books can transport you.

I loved the first half of this book and was really into it, especially the cult setting and the mother/daughter relationship. I really wished it had continued with that. Once the time travel started I became lost. It was a really odd and unexpected transition for me so late into the story and I didn’t quite understand it.

“Some people are who you think they are. Some people hide the wolf inside of them, but you can hear them howl.”

The Invisible Hour comes out 8/15.

This felt like two separate books to me. I loved the first half, less so the second. To be fair, I often struggle with themes of time travel. Literary references abound in this novel and I love the idea that reading can save your life. If you've read The Scarlet Letter or others by Nathaniel Hawthorne, you'll especially appreciate this story.

Words were magic. That was all he knew. Words were all they had. And if that was true, then anything was possible.

If there is ever a sign that I’ve loved a book, it’s when there are highlights galore and this one meets that criteria. The author’s note at the beginning of this one sums it up - this is a love letter to books and readers and how books can save us and change the very course of our lives. And while there is a romance, it’s also in many ways a story about the life-saving magic of a mother’s love. Ivy’s and Mia’s stories are compelling and the prose is lyrical - I felt swept away many times in the language and storytelling. However, the primary magical realism aspect was missing something for me and kept this from being a 5-star read - it felt a bit abrupt and I would have liked for it to have been fleshed out a bit more (clocking in at only 270 pages, there was certainly room for that expansion). That said, the ending was satisfying and if I’d been reading a physical copy, this would have been one of those books I held to my chest and just savored for a bit after finishing. I jumped when I saw this available through Book of the Month, so I’ll be able to have a finished copy on my shelves. This is my first Alice Hoffman, but will definitely not be my last.

Pub Date: 8/15/23
Review Date: 8/6/23
eARC received from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Alice Hoffman is my most read author and an author that helped me fall in love with reading. I am so thankful to receive the opportunity to read The Invisible Hour before it's release.

The Invisible Hour is a book told in three parts. In the first, a series of circumstances lead Ivy to join a remote community in the woods where she is quickly wed by the cult leader. When her daughter is born, while children belong to everyone in the community, the two share a special and unbreakable bond. Her daughter Mia is her reason for everything.

In the second part, years later and following Ivy's death, Mia is at a crossroads. She no longer wants to be part of the community she is bound too. It is her love for a book that saves her and transforms the course of her life. Mia not only falls in love with the book, but the author as well.

I don't want to give away any big spoilers but I will say that part 3 has a time travel and magical realism element that worked for me.

In many ways The Invisible Hour is a love story. It celebrates the love between a mother and her daughter, women saving other women, readers and books, and readers and authors. The chapters are long but I loved the detailed atmospheric language that transported me to each setting.

If I had a critique for the book it was that the ending was a bit abrupt and left me with a lot of questions. Some of the questions had to do with the logistics of the resolution and what that meant, while others were just about Mia's future. I definitely could have used some kind of an epilogue.

If you're a fan of Alice Hoffman, I would definitely recommend The Invisible Hour!

Let the magic begin! That is, the magic of the written word that echos your life and speaks to your soul. No one’s writing does that better than Alice Hoffman’s. She has taken a great novel (The Scarlet Letter) and woven it with her magic touch to make it not only relevant, but amazingly modern in its view of society and a woman’s place in it. The writing is so lyrical, the descriptions so beautiful, and the characters so relatable that reading it was a pleasure. Her statement of mother love is strong and heartwarming.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria/Simon and Schuster for the ARC to read and review.

Alice Hoffman is such an amazing writer. After reading some average mysteries lately and then picking up this novel, there is just no comparison. The writing is perfect and the pages turn themselves. The story of Ivy and Mia are in many ways history repeating itself. It’s a beautiful book and I can’t recommend it enough.

What a lovely blending of past and present. Portrait of how far women have come…and how far we still have to go…in obtaining equality and the rights of control over our own bodies. Clever intertwining with The Scarlet Letter. My only issue was with the glaring inconsistencies at the very end. I’m hoping someone catches them before publication.

No one writes like Alice Hoffman. I think if I was handed a book without knowing the author, I would be able to tell it was hers. The Invisible Hour is another magical book that has our main character travel to another time period. It is also a nod to the rights or lack of, that women have, and the power of books and book banning. The bonds of a mother and daughter can be felt as you watch Mia come of age and find her own way to self-empowerment. There is so much more between the covers of this book as you will discover when you read it.