the strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender summary

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned because men are fools. The history of the Blackburn daughters will have readers hooked to the story. If they fall in love, that love story lasts three days.No Blackburn woman possessed more than one Burden-or blessing-unlike their ancestors.The Blackburn family are a vital part of Anathema Island’s survival (so they can’t really leave).By “disrupted,” she fell in love with one of the men, who turned on her and tried to burn her alive, and after that happened, she took her vengeance and unintentionally cursed her own family. It all started with Rona Blackburn, the matriarch of the Blackburn family, when she arrived on Anathema Island in the Pacific Northwest and “disrupted” the lives of the island’s original eight settlers. To be a Blackburn in The Price Guide to the Occult means: Nor Blackburn tries to avoid the trappings of being a Blackburn, but it’s hard when she’s a teenager, trying to survive while having an unexceptional Burden she can’t do anything with and fearing that her mother will return to Anathema Island and wreck havoc once again on her life. When you come from a family of cursed witches, you try not to fall into the same patterns as your ancestors.

This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.įirst sentence: “Nor Blackburn wasn’t afraid of blood.” I received this book for free from Candlewick Press for review consideration. In her second novel, Leslye Walton spins a dark, mesmerizing tale of a girl stumbling along the path toward self-acceptance and first love, even as the Price Guide’s malevolent author - Nor’s own mother - looms and threatens to strangle any hope for happiness. Nor senses a storm coming and is pretty sure she’ll be smack in the eye of it. But then a mysterious book comes out, promising to cast any spell for the right price. Second, her love life is nonexistent, which means she might escape the other perverse side effect of the matriarch’s backfiring curse, too. She has reason to hope: First, her supernatural powers, if they can be called that, are unexceptional. So Rona cursed them.įast-forward one hundred–some years: All Nor Blackburn wants is to live an unremarkable teenage life. Guilt and fear instead led the island’s original eight settlers to burn “the witch” out of her home. When Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island more than a century ago, her otherworldly skills might have benefited friendlier neighbors. Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | The Book Depository | Indigo | Library The Price Guide to the Occult by Leslye Walton

The strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender summary