Squee from the Keeper Shelf is a new feature wherein we share why we love the books we love, specifically the stories which are permanent residents of our Keeper shelves. Despite flaws, despite changes in age and perspective, despite the passage of time, we love particular books beyond reason, and the only thing better than re-reading them is telling other people about them. At length.

If you’d like to submit your reasons for loving and keeping a particular book for Squee from the Keeper Shelf, please email Sarah!

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When Sarah first approached me about writing the first Squee from the Keeper Shelf, I honestly had to wrack my brain for what book I’d select. A lot of my “keeper” books are in storage at my parents’ place. When I moved from Florida to Massachusetts, I could only take so much and only my unread books went with me. Without being able to survey my full library, I took to Goodreads, which has been an irreplaceable site in tracking what I’ve read and when. Scanning through my 5-star reviews, I saw Garden Spells and knew I had to talk about why I loved it.

Given that I hadn’t read it in several years, I also checked out a copy from my local library since my family was in the midst of back-to-back hurricanes and I didn’t want to bother them with mailing my copy.

As succinctly as I can put the plot, Garden Spells is about trying to escape or fighting to accept who you are. It focuses on the Waverly family, mainly two sisters with two very different viewpoints. The Waverlys hail from Bascom, North Carolina – small town full of gossip – and the Waverly sisters haven’t had it easy as all Waverlys are known for being a little…witchy.

Everyone has their gifts. Cousin Evanelle gives gifts, knowing not what they’re for, only that she has to give a certain item to a certain person. Claire is gifted with plants and cooking, infusing her dishes with emotions. Sydney uses her cosmetology license to imbue confidence and self-love into her clients. Sydney’s daughter Bay knows where things belong – people and things included.

While Claire is a bit high-strung, she enjoys her roots in Bascom because her mother dragged her around from city to city while she was young. Sydney is the opposite, taking off at a young age to escape her Waverly name. But both sisters find themselves inhabiting their late-grandmother’s house and battling the challenges of being together again.

On the surface, the book combines two of my favorite movies: Practical Magic and Simply Irresistible. The former has witchy sisters with tons of baggage and the latter has magical food!

But what really makes me have such fond opinions of this book is when it entered my life.

I will issue a trigger warning for my upcoming backstory in case people are sensitive to issues involving depression.

I was nineteen, fully engulfed in the worst depression of my life. I had attempted suicide and shortly after that my mother ran off. Since my father traveled for work, I moved back home and took time off from college to help raise my then fourteen year old brother. It was a horrible, awful time and my routine consisted of mainly taking my brother to school in the morning, driving into town, and picking up an armload of holds from the library. I would read all day until it was time to pick my brother up from school.

On one such occasion, Garden Spells was part of my holds. Magical realism was right up my alley and I love foodie characters in my books. What I didn’t expect was how beautifully written the book would be and how much of an impact it would have on me.

Here is the opening paragraph:

Every smiley moon, without fail, Claire dreamed of her childhood. She always tried to stay awake those nights when the stars winked and the moon was just a cresting sliver smiling provocatively down at the world, the way pretty women on vintage billboards used to smile as they sold cigarette and limeade.

Most of all, it was the dichotomy of the two sisters that swirled in my soul and stayed in my gut. They were like two sides to the same coin, like the two often adversarial sides of myself.

Claire hates change. She’s fine with what she has and has drowned herself in helping others, rather than helping herself:

…Waverlys, for all their blindness to their own way of living, were extremely accurate in helping other people see.

It’s easy for me to forget myself, to practice self-care, in favor of making others happy.

She seemed comfortable, the way their grandmother used to seem comfortable. Don’t-move-me-and-I’ll-be-fine-comfortable.

While depression wasn’t exactly comfortable, it became routine. It became familiar and part of me was frightened at what waited outside of depression. It became this weird mindset of I’m learning to cope with this and deal with this and live with this; I don’t want to have to relearn how to live, even though it’d (hopefully) be a positive change.

Sydney, on the other hand, eschewed her Waverly name and tried to escape from where people knew her history because she realized that no one would ever see her as anything but a weird Waverly. Here’s a description of what existing in Bascom was like for Sydney:

They had to step out into Bascom society and do what their parents expected of them, become their family names. And Sydney was, in the end, just a Waverly.

That concept of being defined by a certain characteristic… that I completely understood. Did I want to be defined by my depression? Did I want my own mother’s history with mental illness become my legacy as well?

Opening this book again after so many years caused such a surreal feeling to wash over me. It was partly fear of what a reread would bring up, but also comfort and catharsis, too. I think a cried more this time than when I first read it because I know how far I’ve come. I know how much has changed, how much I’ve changed and because of that, I get to view the text and the magic and the mysticism and the love with brighter eyes.

It’s truly a beautiful book and finishing it left me exhausted, but satisfied, like watching your favorite ugly-cry movie that though puts you through the wringer still gives you a happy ending. I’m interested to see what sorts of emotions will come up and how Claire and Sydney and all the other Waverlys will make me feel five years from now. Ten years. Twenty. This is a book that I want to read at all stages of my life, until I can’t read anymore.