Review Detail

SORCERY AND CECELIA, first published in 2004 by Harcourt and released just a few weeks ago in e-book form by Open Road Media, is a gem of a book. I didn't get wind of the book on its first release, so I am grateful to Open Road for putting it on my radar, because I adored it, and am heading out to find the sequel.

SORCERY AND CECELIA is an epistolary novel -- that is, the story is told in the letters two cousins write to each other. This is no accident; in fact, the story was written when two writers decided to play the Letter Game, and when they had finished, they realized they had a book on their hands. (The Letter Game, which the authors explain more thoroughly in an afterword, basically entails writing letters in character.) That the two narrators were written by two writers means their voices are distinct, yet natural -- and yet the story is cohesive, the story unfolding naturally.

My deep affection for Pride and Prejudice may have predisposed me to love SORCERY AND CECELIA, but I suspect I would have enjoyed the book whether or not I had ever read a Jane Austen novel, or watched a BBC costume drama. The cousins Kate and Cecelia are both intelligent, adventurous and determined, qualities which both get them into and out of trouble throughout the narrative. Yet they are not anachronistic. They don't feel like modern girls, but rather like Regency women who refuse to be corseted into submission.

In their world, magic is real, as real as the necessity of finding a decent pair of gloves, and as commonplace. The very ordinariness of magic was refreshing. There was no hoopla, or long explanations about its existence. Magic simply is, like oxygen, part of the structure of the world.

The elements of romance were utterly satisfying as well. Part of what makes Jane Austen novels so compelling is that the right people end up together. So too do Kate and Cece end up with men who are worthy of them, no small feat considering how much I adored the girls by novel's end, and how much I wished for their lives to be full and magical.

So if you're a fan of romance, magic, period dramas, Jane Austen, gloves, chocolate pots or even if you just like good writing, I encourage you to pick up SORCERY AND CECELIA, whether in physical or e-book format.