SPELLS & STITCHES - Barbara Bretton
Sugar Maple Chronicles , Book 4
Berkley Books
ISBN: 978-0-425-24105-9
December 2011
Paranormal Romance
Sugar Maple, Vermont – The Present
Half-human sorceress Chloe Hobbs is a descendent of the witch Aerynn, who led the magical creatures from Salem during the time of the Witch Trials to a safe haven, Sugar Maple. Aerynn cast a protective spell over the town to keep it safe as long as someone of her descent lived there. So Sugar Maple is filled with witches, fae, shapeshifters of every ilk, and goblins trying to keep Sugar Maple under the radar of human knowledge. Except for Chloe's husband, all-human Luke MacKenzie, who came to Sugar Maple to investigate the town's first and only murder, and now is the love of her life and father of her unborn daughter. While Chloe works in her yarn shop, two women enter and, for the first time, Chloe meets Luke's shocked mother who is searching for Luke's reputed girlfriend to find a reconnecting link to her son. At eight months pregnant, Chloe fumbles to explain an unexplainable situation to her daughter's grandmother.
Luke MacKenzie, former Boston homicide detective, came to Sugar Maple for one reason and stayed for another. He and his first wife divorced after the tragic death of their young daughter. After this event, Luke tried to escape his old life, even his family. He found that in Sugar Maple and more. He loves Chloe and is desperate to protect his daughter, even before she is born. The hard part is keeping secrets entrusted to him from the outside world, which includes his family. So far an easy task since he hasn't seen them in two years; however, now his nosy, bossy mother has not only discovered she has a granddaughter on the way, but also the fact that Luke is not even married to his daughter's mother! How can he explain that her last phone message (of many recurring calls) was cut off when his phone plopped into the Atlantic Ocean while a pack of selkies rushed him after he helped a friend, who just happens to be a selkie, return to the sea?
Chloe is an expert at falling into hilarious unpredictable situations, especially as she is new to magic and her control over smoking, sparking fingertips that can shoot bolts of magic is not perfectly controlled. Luke's large, bold, and brassy family is expert at placing him in situations, but then he and Chloe live a strange, secretive, lifestyle. These situations will keep anyone who enjoys situational humor reading, although there is a serious note concerning the birth of their daughter. If they are to remain a couple, somehow the two of them have to integrate Luke's family with the Sugar Maple residents' reticence about humans, and add to this dilemma, his parents are about to become grandparents to a granddaughter who wields magic. Who knew all this existed in staid Vermont ? SPELLS & STITCHES is a sequel to CASTING SPELLS, LACED WITH MAGIC, and SPUN BY SORCERY, but it is easy to understand without having read the previous volumes, but it will create an urge to read those previous stories.
Robin Lee
