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Let’s take a ride on the Way Back Machine to October 2020, the first month in which Heart.Wants.Books. Celebrated a month filled with Witchy Reads. At that time, we read (I re-read) and reviewed The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe. Today, we’re finally reviewing the title I purchased for us that month for the low, low price of $2.99 on Kindle, The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs, Howe’s 2019 release and the follow-up title to Physick. Howe has also co-written two books with Anderson Cooper since our last review in 2020, Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune this year, and the bestseller Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty from 2021. Howe has several other novels and, as a reminder, edited The Penguin Book of Witches. She lives and sails in New England with her family, where she’s working on her next novel and puts hot sauce on everything.

Connie and her boyfriend Sam have been living in Boston for the past 9 years since the life-changing summer of 1991. Connie is on tenure track for an Early American History position at Northeastern University and Sam is a steeplejack, preserving historic church buildings for the future. Connie’s mother, Grace, is living in the house on Milk Street in Marblehead, Massachusetts, that had been passed down to them from their magical foremothers all the way back to Deliverance Dane. Connie’s in the middle of a myriad of small crises: she’s struggling to be inspired by the book she’s writing to help secure tenure, her newest doctoral student, Zazi (short for Esperanza) attends Harvard – not Northeastern!-  and studies occult religions in early America, she keeps fighting the peer pressure to get a cell phone, and she has to decide about Sam wanting to get married. She has a lot of decisions to make and would really just prefer to coast along until tenure is secured than have to make them. She especially does not want to advertise that Deliverance Dane’s Physick book is preserved on microfilm and is her main primary source for the book she’s been trying to write, and now has to use to finish up her book and save the life she has been trying to build for a decade.

The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs is an engrossing second installment to Physick, continuing with the same cast of characters – plus one or two- set in the near enough past to be nostalgic and also make me feel a little old. I’m giving Daughters four solid stars. I’ll recommend it to anyone looking for a modern-ish witchy read or anyone who wants a book about a life in academia. It was a fast-paced read once I finally sat down with the words and being reintroduced to familiar characters was a balm in a crazy week.

Do you enjoy reading a sequel to a book even if it comes out a decade later?

~Ashley

I get to go first in answering Ashley’s question – I do enjoy a sequel that comes out a decade later, especially if the action in the aforementioned sequel takes place a decade later!  I also enjoy a reread before reading said sequel, and while I didn’t do that in this case, I did look up a couple of pieces, especially in the beginning, because as you all know, my memory is not all there sometimes.  

Before I take a hard turn, I’m going to continue piggy backing on Ashley.  I love Connie’s refusal to get a cell phone.  LOVE IT!  Remember, we’re talking 2000, so while most folks had a cell phone, not everyone did.  Some days I wish I still didn’t!  You also know I love a good train wreck on the page, and woah isn’t Connie’s life a hot mess express, even if it is one of her own making, which is frustrating.  After getting fully immersed in The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs, I remembered one of my struggles with The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane – I wanted more from Connie.  In the first book she’s younger, still finding herself, so I get it, but 10 years later and approaching tenure, I do expect a bit of adulting to go on, well, a bit more than I see on the page at least, and I also expect some character development as she’s in the process of realizing her dreams.  Ashley says she got there, I’m going to sit squarely on the fence because while there was minimal progress, I don’t know that it was enough, especially when I feel like there were pieces of development Sam drug Connie through fighting him all the way.  

Hard turn and all, I’m giving The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs four solid stars.  The writing is thoughtful and atmospheric, the plot is very fun and intriguing, especially the witchy bits, historical and modern, and even though the character development wasn’t everything I wanted, I guess there was some marginal growth.  It was fun to be back in Marblehead, Salem, and Boston, and again made me want to take such a trip in the fall.  I don’t know that I’ll reread it, but I’m definitely more interested in Howe’s backlist!

What’s a book you have a beef with but adore all the same?

~Nikki

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