4 out of 4 stars
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An Untold Want by Sara Stark is set in the small Georgian town of Jacob’s Creek. Per usual, it is the kind of small town where everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows that the MacAllisters are a family of witches with a curse upon them. Maggie MacAllister is trying her best to break the curse and shun her heritage, but her daughter, Liz, embraces the wiccan culture wholeheartedly. Liz even teaches a few things to her best friend, Desi, and the two try to pair up Desi’s father and Liz’s mother. Despite the two being a match made in heaven, Maggie’s fear of the curse keeps her from engaging in a true relationship. She doesn’t want Desi's father to become just another MacAllister man – a headstone in the family cemetery.
When I first read the description for this book, I mistakenly thought that it would be historical fiction. Most of the complications in the novel – witches, curses, pregnancy out of wedlock, and teenage pregnancy – aren’t given two blinks in modern society. However, in a small town in Georgia, reputation seems to be a huge motivational factor. To Maggie, what others thought of her and her child seemed to dictate her entire life. Liz, on the other hand, cared less about consequences and more about treating people the way they deserved to be treated, rather than how Georgian manners would dictate how they should be treated. This contrast between mother and daughter plays a huge role in the novel.
In my opinion, the characters were the novel’s strongest point. Each character had their own background and reasons for acting they way they did. The author even took us back in time through diary entries, allowing us to get to know all of the MacAllister women, whom we would otherwise only know through stories and the rare offhand comment. I actually enjoyed these diary entries the most, because they broke up the story and gave the reader more history about the old house that has been in the family since Jacob’s Creek was founded, why the entire family hated a certain character, and so on. One thing I will mention is that because the diaries come from so many different women who are all related to each other, at the beginning of the novel it was hard to keep track of which character was related to who in what way.
One thing that bothered me was how stubborn some of the women were. Maggie, in particular, hated the fact that she was a social pariah, but never did anything to try and change her status. It was as if she was resigned to die an outsider just because she was a single mother who refused to socialize with the other families in town. Maggie’s character vexed me, because even as her own daughter made and learned from her own mistakes, Maggie was stuck in the past and set in her ways, almost to the point of being obnoxious. Her character wasn’t completely unlikable, but her pessimism and depression made for slow reading in the first half of the book.
That being said, with such memorable scenery and characters, it’s not likely that I’ll ever be able to forget this book. The small details, such as the biscuit-baking and the descriptions of the quilts in the house, honestly made this the most Southern book I’ve ever read. I would hate to live in Jacob’s Creek with its pitiable, overly- conservative families, but I was quickly stuck in my own mental version of the town while reading the book.
I give An Untold Want 4 out of 4 stars. The plot and character development is something to applaud. I would also recommend this book to anyone who enjoys books about small town societies and Southern comforts. As there is a bit of sexual content, I would suggest it for mature teens and above. I would not suggest it to anyone who has had trauma from pregnancy or abuse, as there may be some triggering passages.
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An Untold Want
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