Alice Hoffman

Sally and Gillian were taken in by their aunts when they were small after the deaths of their parents. The Owens women have always been considered witches by everyone around them. They use black soap to wash with and have a garden that produces year-round.
Sally and Gillian are like night and day from each other. Sally is the one who works and cooks and cleans, while Gillian plays and makes fun of Sally.
They grow up and have very different lives from each other. Gillian has been away for a very long time and suddenly calls her sister and needs her help with something. They go through some major changes and become real women.
Love puts them in very different arenas.… (altro)

Here we are in small town Haddan, Massachusetts, home to the minor private school which is largely ignored by the town's residents. Until one night, a suspicious death occurs at the school.....

The school's well painted, the town is too, as are several of the characters. But I was irritated by the way in which the narration was perpetually interrupted by digressions to the past, as a means of illuminating the present. I wanted to read to the end and see how things turned out. But more importantly, I wanted to get to the end.… (altro)