The six months of the year when my writing programmes are on are almost impossibly busy. Add book launches, travel and literature fests to a busy season, and I’ve had barely any time to read! But in the midst of it all, I snatched snippets of time to read the gorgeous Hour of the Bees that I was hard put not to sob over at the airport.
Carolina (who prefers to be called Carol) has to spend all summer on a ranch in New Mexico, while her friends have sleepovers and get ready for a new year at school. Through the yawning summer months, she must take care of her little brother Lu and her Grandpa Serge, as her parents make arrangements to move her grandfather out of the ranch and to a home for people with dementia. Carol knows she will hate it and makes her friends promise to text her all the time.
But soon, she realises she doesn’t quite hate it. There’s something magnetic about her grandpa and his stories. Once upon a time, there was a tree …
Carol must know how each story ends. What happens next? Why do the characters have the same names as her family? As the summer goes by, Carol begins loses track of what’s real and what’s part of Grandpa’s stories. What is magic? What is not?
I love how gently we’re sucked into a story that blends fantasy and realism. Complex family relationships made my heart ache, even as curiosity buzzed through me just like the bees in the story. Slowly, relationships blossom, blurring the lines between not just real and magical, but also love and hate, and life and death. Engrossing and deeply satisfying, Hour of the Bees is a beautiful story. It’s a story about everything that defines who we are: love, change, and finding a place where you belong.
| Title | Hour of the Bees |
| Author | Lindsay Eagar |
| Tags | Magical realism, Middle Grade |
| Rating (out of 5) | 5 |
| Age-group | 11+ |
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