The Lights of Sugarberry Cove

The Lights of Sugarberry Cove
by Heather Webber
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250774620
Publication Date: October 26, 2021
Pages: 263
Genre: Magical Realism
Publisher: Forge

Sadie Way Scott has been avoiding her family and hometown of Sugarberry Cove, Alabama, since she nearly drowned in the lake just outside her mother’s B&B. Eight years later, Sadie is the host of a much-loved show about southern cooking and family, but despite her success, she wonders why she was saved. What is she supposed to do?

Sadie’s sister, Leala Clare, is still haunted by the guilt she feels over the night her sister almost died. Now, at a crossroads in her marriage, Leala has everything she ever thought she wanted—so why is she so unhappy?

When their mother suffers a minor heart attack just before Sugarberry Cove’s famous water lantern festival, the two sisters come home to run the inn while she recovers. It’s the last place either of them wants to be, but with a little help from the inn’s quirky guests, the sisters may come to terms with their strained relationships, accept the past, and rediscover a little lake magic.

This is a gentler, sweeter, more idealised version of Sarah Addison Allen’s brand of magical realism.  Having read quite a bit of Webber’s other work, I was prepared for the almost-but-not-quite saccharine theme, but after the ‘meh’-ness of my previous two reads I was in danger of slumping, and was in the mood for some magical realism.  This fit the bill nicely and I found myself delightfully pulled into the story, something I needed.

The book bounced between the POVs of the two sisters and how they deal with coming together after 8 years to help their difficult mother after a minor heart attack.  Everybody’s carrying guilt over something and not telling anyone else about it.  And of course there’s a love interest left behind, and a marriage in jeopardy.  But while the tropes are all there, Webber avoided dealing with those tropes in a cliched fashion.  Nothing outrageous (beyond being magical realism, of course), but just subtle choices that made for an interestingly predictable story instead of a boringly predictable one.

It all comes together a little too neatly at the end, but the story redeemed itself for me with the twist in the last few pages.  Webber surprised me and delighted me with that twist, so it gets 4 stars in spite of the too tidy ending everybody gets.  It is a feel-good kind of novel, after all.

And now I suspect I’ll be re-visiting Sarah Addison Allen’s books.