Category: Magical

Cats, Magic, Action! How To Survive Your Magical Family, by Clare Rhoden: Review

Toby’s family is not an ordinary family. They are magical, talented, and special. … Toby isn’t any of these things. The only special thing he can do is pretty useless. Toby can talk with cats. (From the blurb.)

In the blink of a magical silver bangle, Toby’s family goes from being a one cat to a seven cat household. The cats can talk with Toby, even though he is really a dog person. But two of the cats are something very special indeed. They are Arch-cats. Arch-cat Flax has always lived with them. But Katerina had been missing for decades. Somehow she has now returned. All very mysterious. But there is no time cat-talk and explanations. For Toby is kidnapped!

How To Survive Your Magical Family is full of cats.

When we look for a book we consider the cover. This one features a looming mysterious cat-like image and the words, “magical” and “family”. Obviously, we are going to consider this one! The blurb tells us that Toby rescues a family of abandoned cats. I like Toby already. Then you dig into the actual reading and are plunged into the action of a manic bus drive as Toby is kidnapped by an apparently crazy woman and … and .. But I won’t say more. Cats! Magic! Action! A great, pacy read, full of adventure, cats and magic

“Clare Rhoden writes thoughtful adventures with heart and soul. Known for her immersive world-building and relatable characters, Clares’ books tell of hop and love in the darkest times”. (Note about Author, at back of How To Survive Your Magical Family.

Read more about this magical book, and see pictures of arch-cat Katerina, at Clare Rhoden’s website.

Where to find and buy it:

Odyssey Books

Booktopia

Amazon Australia

Barnes & Noble

Clare Rhoden also wrote Stars in The Night, which I reviewed here. Where to find it: From publisher Odyssey Books , from Book Shop Org (supporting local bookshops) and from Amazon in softcover and Kindle, Barnes and Noble in soft cover Nook, Chapters Indigo, Booktopia, and Waterstones. Or, ask your friendly local bookstore to order it in for you.

Prefer Dystopian to Magic? Clare has also written a dsytopian series called The Chronicles of the Pale. See more about the series at her website here. My review of the first book in the series is here.

Love and Home Grown Magic, by Patricia Bossano

When you hear the word ‘Magic’, what fills your mind? Stardust. Moonlight. Fairy god witches?

When you read the word, ‘Love’, what then sweeps your memories? Home, Family, Children, one’s first romance? Come, read this book, and let these things fill you.

The first time I read Love and Homegrown Magic it looked straight forward .. for a while. Here is the tale of a girl, Maggie, who grows to womanhood, falls in love, marries, and in time becomes the matriarch of an extended family. And the children grow and find love and marry, hard things sometimes happen, and love sometimes fades, and people die. But always dreams are nurtured..

Maggie dreams of her own garden and nursery enterprise. But ten years pass in raising three daughters, and then her husband, Angelo, insists on their return to their home country. A bleak feature looms. But Maggie rallies. She is sure her dream has heavenly endorsement. Beginning with tubs on the kitchen window sill, she creates the Jardines LunaRosa where the first roses- and Maries’ daisies- blossom from special plantings by moonlight by her small children. Reading this, I immediately saw and accepted that it was an enchanted garden.

‘Darkness cloaked the hillside home, but light, as if from a dozen chandeliers, spilled out of the kitchen window as the auras of the green witch and her daughters flickered in bright flashes to the rhythm of their chatter. … The stars looked down on their charges and twinkled approvingly.‘Ch. 23.

I read the book again; and again finished it with reluctance, because now it was over. “How does she do that?” I asked myself about author Patricia Bossano’s story telling skill. “How did she make it seem that way?” But you can’t look too hard into these sorts of qualities for fear the spell of it all, like dreams, will slip away.

Love and Home Grown Magic is indeed a story of family, for perhaps magic is created by ourselves at what we feel is home, if only, like Maggie, we look upon it that way.

Where to find Love and Home Grown Magic: published 2020 by Water Bearer Press: Book Shop Org (supporting local bookshops), Amazon and more.

Patricia Bossano has also written Faery Sight, Nahia and Cradle Gift. I reviewed her Seven Ghostly Spins.

Where to unshroud Seven Ghostly Spins: From Amazon in Kindle and soft cover, Barnes and Noble in Kobo and soft cover,  also Waterstones. Hardcover editions are also available. Or, ask your friendly local bookstore to order it in for you, and for your friends who appreciate a frission of the supernatural.

Mark is guardian and blundering typist for Mawson, one of this bright world’s few published bears.