Hoffman has a soothing touch, so we quickly get over the various horrific tragedies with which her latest book is littered – any one of which would pole-axe us personally for life. Yet just as he’s starting to enjoy himself, he remembers that he too is cursed to die young. As a youth, he breaks the hearts of endless girls, before realising that he is gay. The girls’ brother, the irresistible wizard Vincent Owens, has a different problem. It’s what life is, my girl.” It’s all the great circle of death, we comfort ourselves, as we stroll through the scented garden of Hoffman’s prose Aunt Isabelle is sanguine about the whole thing, and encourages the girls to keep on loving boys anyway, saying wisely: “When you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together.
In the summer that they go to stay with their Aunt Isabelle, at least four local lads – including an adorable pair of 17-year-old twins – come to shocking ends. This spell makes life difficult for Frances and Jet, especially when they become sexually aware teenagers. Thus before she went to her grave Maria decided to protect her female descendants by casting a spell to ensure that every male who loves an Owens woman will die, horribly and fast.
The fact that Maria’s lover was a state-sponsored serial killer of women led the young witch to conclude – erroneously, one hopes – that all men are a bad thing.
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