The Magnolia League

Gr 11 Up—After the sudden death of her mother, Alexandria Lee, a 16-year-old hippie, moves from the communal farm in California where she was raised to live with her flawlessly beautiful and suspiciously young-looking grandmother in Georgia. There Alex learns that she is the heir of a legendary and powerful society called "The Magnolia League"—a group of gorgeous, powerful, seemingly perfect women and girls. Alex is not sure she fits in: she is hardly skinny, loves environmental causes, and sports vintage rock T-shirts. As she becomes more involved in the secretive society, she inexplicably extinguishes a wildfire without touching it and, after drinking a vitamin water spiked with a strange mixture of herbs, she gets over her ex-boyfriend overnight. Eventually she learns the Magnolias' secret: for years the order has employed a powerful local family of hoodoo practitioners to cast spells that keep the ladies beautiful and flush in wealth and status—so long as they never leave Savannah. Alex struggles to remain true to her convictions as she transforms into a slim and breathtakingly beautiful Magnolia. A newfound love leads her down a path of temptation to employ hoodoo tricks to keep the romance alive, even though she knows it is wrong. Everything comes to a head on the evening of Alex's coming out in Savannah society, when she learns a dark secret her grandmother has kept from her since her mother's death. The book offers a compelling story with likable and well-developed characters. Moreover, with the perfect mix of humor, romance, mystery and the supernatural, it provides ample entertainment yet leaves room for a sequel. While some readers might find the switch from first person to third person between chapters awkward, the technique helps explain secrets to readers while Alex remains in the dark.—Tara Kehoe, Plainsboro Public Library, NJ