I loved this book. Alex ( main character ) is an unlikely Southern Belle by default only. She was raised on a commune by her herbalist mom and has led a very unSouthern and unladylike life. She has a head full of dreads and a bit of a chubby body. She has never been shopping  since all of her vintage tees and other clothes come from a communal closet at the commune.

Suddenly her mom dies and she is swept off to her Grandmother’s mansion. Her grandmother is young looking, vibrant, wealthy and the head of a group of women called The Magnolia League. Miss Lee (her grandmother) wants Alex to make her debut and take her place next to her as the next head of the Magnolia League.  Miss Lee presides over all the other young looking sweet tea sipping ladies and prepares Alex for the infamous Magnolia League Debutante Ball.


Alex is not sure that this is what she wants to do. She is irreverent and in the beginning does not take this whole thing very seriously. Slowly, as she is sort of overwhelmed by her grandmother and two other Magnolias…Hayes and Madison…she protests less and less. Alex is sort of an earth child. She wants to recycle and ride her bike to school and be less of a consumer. But sneaky little spells are cast all around her and strange things begin to happen. She begins to learn about hoodoo…yep…I said hoodoo…and soon her dreads are shaved off and instantly replaced by a head full of amazing hair. She loses twenty pounds in a month due to a bracelet she wears that causes her calories to be burned up by a bird doppelganger and she tries to buy a spell to make a boy like her. And with all of this going on she tries to understand why her mom ran away from her grandmother and what the hoodoo people…The Sullivan’s…have to do with all of this.


I did really love this book. I have read Katie Crouch’s books before and she writes beautifully and with much skill. I still can’t tell if this book is strictly YA or a sort of hybrid. But it was yummy!!! It ended with a (sigh) question so it has the feel of a series.