Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe

 Midnight at the Blackbird Cafe by Heather Webber   336 pages

Anna Kate has come home to Wicklow, Alabama. Not really home for her, but it is where her Granny Zee lived all her life and where she owned and operated The Blackbird Café. Now that Granny Zee has died, it’s up to Anna Kate to run the café for three months before she can sell it, close it, or do what she wants with it.  Luckily, it’s summertime, and Anna Kate doesn’t have to head back to Boston where she will enter medical school.

The townspeople are very interested in Anna Kate. Seems like the majority of those who frequent the café never even knew Zee had a granddaughter until Anna Kate showed up. Anna Kate’s mother left town shortly after a car accident that killed her boyfriend, son of a prominent family, and never looked back.

The café is one of the center pieces…a place to grab a bite, as well as the magic that can be found in the blackbird pies. Anna Kate jumps right in and learns the restaurant business and takes over the pie-baking. There’s a secret to the blackbird pies.

If a person eats a piece of the café’s blackbird pie, she/he will receive a message from a departed loved one.  It work. Many of the local townspeople are there when the café opens for breakfast to make sure the pies don’t sell out before they can get a piece.

The a flock of birders start showing up to see and hear the blackbirds that live in the mulberry tree behind the café. They only come out at midnight, singing their haunting melody and bridging the gap between this world and the next.  As rumors of the rare blackbird sightings spread among bird lovers acros the world, Wicklow becomes more and more of a tourist destination.

The Anna Kate has to come face-to-face with one of the town’s most prominent families, the Lindens. Seems she looks exactly like their late son, AJ, who was killed in the aforementioned accident. Having moved around most of her life, seldom staying in one place more than two years, Anna Kate can’t decide if she wants a relationship with her new-found family or not.

Anna Kate has a lot of decisions to make in the next three months.  Readers of this sweet little  stor will love to follow along as Anna Kate charts new territories in almost every aspect of her life.  I was never sure how Anna Kate knew so much about Wicklow since she had never visited the tiny town. That’s why “Midnight at the Blackbird Café” receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The Book Charmer

The Book Charmer by Karen Hawkins   368 pages

The small town of Dove Pond, North Carolina, is slowly dying. Most of the shops and businesses have all moved away. But the people who live ther love it; generations of their families have called it home.

Sarah Dove is one such person. A descendant of the town’s founders and the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, Sarah has a special gift. Most people in the town know that she has a unique ability to find the right book for the right person at the moment they need it. But what most people don’t know is that the books talk to her. Sarah and the books don’t have conversations, but Sarah understands the noises they make. It’s really kinda cute. No wonder she became the town librarian.

Recently a new family has moved in down the street: Grace Wheeler, her foster mother Mama G, and her neice, Daisy. Sarah feels, and the books confirm, that Grace is the one who can save Dove Pond.

Grace has other plans. She left a high paying, successful job in finance to care for Mama G, the woman who took in Grace and her sister, Hannah, when no one else wanted them. It wasn’t easy trying to raise two very angry little girls. Now that Mama G has been diagnosed with dementia, Grace is taking her to her hometown of Dove Pond.

Grace has vowed she will only stay a year. She vows not to get involved in making friends and especially not to get involved witht the motorcycle-riding bad boy who lives next door and sends shock waves pulsing through her body when their eyes meet.

I found Grace’s vow alittle strange in that who knows how long Mama G might live. And then there is Daisy. An angry little girl whose mother died and left her. Since there wasn’t a father in the picture, it’s up to Grace to raise Daisy. She doesn’t seem to have any ideas what to do with her, much less if she takes yer back to Raleigh and her eighty-hour-a-work-week lifestyle.

But I need not to have worried too much. Grace, reluctantly, becomes the head committee chairperson of a local festival. The festival is important to the town, it’s tradition to host it every year. The townspeople won’t let it die, no matter what.

All these struggles make “The Book Charmer” a sweet read. I feel that the title  of the novel is a bit misleading because Sarah, the book charmer, is a secondary protagonist.  I expected more of Sarah. I wasn’t overly happy with the ending, But it does set the characters and the town up for a sequel.  Therefore, receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.