yoyo, have you read this? I hadn't heard of it so checked it out. The writing would have to be outstanding for me as I'm not really into magical realism

I feel the same as Vee, although my local library website shows it's popular:

I tried listening to it while I was at my loom weaving....but I have to confess I hate listening to a book unless it's someone like Bill Bryson ( who is a delight to hear read his own book).

So it might be something I'll need to have in hand to read.

I have not read it. However a friend of mine did, and she liked it quite a bit. I thought of borrowing it from the library, but the wait list is so long they have stopped taking names, 42 Holds on 13 copies, and worse on the ebook.

Yoyobon, Sheri_z6 read it and posted this in the December 2020 reading thread:

"I just finished The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. In a similar world to ours, magical beings exist, and quiet, by-the-book Linus Baker is a caseworker for the Department In Charge Of Magical Youth. He is sent to investigate an orphanage holding some extremely magical and potentially dangerous children, and his life is upended. I really enjoyed this book, it was fresh and charming and the children were fabulously written."

Yes! I liked it a lot. It was off-beat and charming.

I have enjoyed a couple of other books by this author, and have heard nothing but good about this one on the other reading forums I participate in.

Love the cover!

I'm on the library wait list, heading up closer to the top.

A WALL STREET JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF SUMMER 2021
A 2020 INDIES INTRODUCE & INDIE NEXT LIST PICK

A #1 best-seller in France and in Italy, where it was dubbed Italy’s favorite “lockdown novel,” Fresh Water for Flowers is an intimately told story about a woman who defiantly believes in happiness, despite it all.

Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Her life is lived to the predictable rhythms of the often funny, always moving confidences that casual mourners, regular visitors, and sundry colleagues share with her. Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of Julien Sole—local police chief—who has come to scatter the ashes of his recently deceased mother on the gravesite of a complete stranger. It soon becomes clear that Julien’s inexplicable gesture is intertwined with Violette’s own complicated past.

“Melancholic and yet ebullient… An appealing indulgence in nature, food and drink, and, above all, friendships.”—The Guardian

yoyo - I just bought that book! Well, at least I tried. Seems its scarce and expensive. That just makes me want it more.

skibby..... i just ordered a paperback on Amason , not too expensive. ( my keyboard is malfunctioning and I don't have the last letter of the alphabet so I use S instead ! )

Yoyobon, I read it a few months ago and liked it.

The Moon, The Stars And Madam Burova by Ruth Hogan

From the wildly popular bestselling author of The Keeper of Lost Things—an uplifting,

slightly magical story about how it’s never too late to find out who you really are.

"Ruth Hogan is the queen of uplifting fiction and Madame Burova reminds us why. The writing crackles with humor and warmth. I can't imagine a better book in which to lose yourself at the moment. Stunning, immersive and absolutely wonderful." --Annie Lyons, author of The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett

Madame Burova—beloved Tarot reader, palmist, and clairvoyant—is retiring and leaving her booth on the Brighton seafront.

After inheriting her mother’s fortune-telling business as a young woman, Imelda Burova has spent her life on the Brighton pier practicing her trade. She and her trusty pack of Tarot cards have seen the lovers and the liars, the angels and the devils, the dreamers and the fools. Now, after a lifetime of keeping other people’s secrets, Madam Burova is ready to have a little piece of life for herself. But she still has one last thing to do—to fulfill a promise made in the 1970s, when she and her girlfriends were carefree, with their whole lives still before them.

In London, it is time for another woman to make a fresh start. Billie has lost her university job, her marriage, and her place in the world when a sudden and unlikely discovery leaves her very identity in question. Determined to find answers, she must follow a trail…which leads to Brighton, the pier, and directly to Madame Burova’s door.

In a story spanning over fifty years, Ruth Hogan has conjured a magical world of 1970s holiday camps and seaside entertainers, eccentrics, heroes and villains, the lost and the found. Young people will make careless choices which echo down the years….but it’s never too late to put things right.

Well that looks intriguing all right, Yoyobon. Are you planning to read it? I think I'll go look at my library website and if it's available, put that one on my For Later shelf,

I well remember the Brighton Pier and the booths there. My sister and I recorded a song each in one of them when we were children. My grandfather worked on the gate at the dance floor at the end of the pier and let me in free for a dance once with a friend!

This book would interest me very much.