I was not able to finish this book as I couldn't continue to read as there was the incest. That is just not something I can sit and read about and enjoy.

This book will take some time to digest. It’s called a book hangover. For some reason when I first glanced at the description, I took it as a fantasy story where the main character was chasing her brother, Silver through her dreams. I was wrong and I was right. I probably wouldn’t have picked it up if I had known it was about a small town, dysfunctional family. I don’t read books like that. Real life is depressing enough. Half way through, I very nearly gave it up.

I am so glad I didn’t. There are many themes in the book, love versus passion, fantasy versus reality, overcoming grief, growth. At what point is a person too old for fairy tales? Is giving up those fairy tales the same as losing hope? Or is it only a matter of finding something better? Something more meaningful? It’s a lot to take in. It’s a lot to think about. I still don’t know how I feel about it.

It’s been said in every other review, but I suppose I’ll say it again. Alice Hoffman’s writing is beautiful, lyrical, poetic. Even when dealing with such awful subjects as drugs and incest, she somehow managed to make it beautiful. You could hear the crickets chirping in the moonlight, feel the summer breeze blowing off the river, the chill of early morning fog.

The story is driven relentlessly on by the never-ending drama. Just when you think it can’t get worse for Teresa, just when you think Silver can’t get more awful, just when Dina finds happiness, something happens. It gets worse. The characters fall lower then they ever have before. Unfortunately, Teresa and Dina seem to be the only ones who find redemption, and even then, you could argue that Dina never found it. She was better in the end, but not as good as she could have been. Not enough to pull her children back from the edge. It was too little too late. She loved herself more than she loved her children. Going so far as to actually speak out loud or write down which ones were her favorites. Just the same, Dina’s story tore my heart out.

This won’t be a story for everyone, and that’s certainly understandable. If you could appreciate nothing else in the book, it certainly gets you thinking, and sometimes it takes an uncomfortable topic to do so. Those topics abound. Incest is the most prevalent, but drugs, alcoholism, prostitution, and abuse of women are also contained within the pages, and at times were worse than the incest. Still, I think if one can get past the discomfort of it all, this book is well worth reading and pushing through to the end.

I did feel like some story threads were left incomplete. What was the deal with the necklace and Harper? Whatever happened to King Connor and Reuben? What happened to Dina’s mother in New Mexico? These loose threads left me with a sense of unfinished in my mouth, but ultimately it was Teresa’s story and I suppose it ended where it needed to.

Thank you to Open Road Media and Net Galley for providing me with ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A special thank you to NetGalley and Open Road Integrated Media for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For those of you who read my reviews, you know how much I love Alice Hoffman's words. Hoffman could teach a master class. You know those online seminars that you see advertised on social media sites? Well, Alice Hoffman should lead one.

Teresa's mother, Dina, fills her head with bedtime stories of an Aria—a dark-eyed fearless hero on a white horse who would come and rescue her. Aria's are rule breakers and so is her brother, Silver, who Teresa comes to believe is one of these fabled men. Instead of a fairytale, Teresa and Silver's relationship is dark and dysfunctional, not unlike her mother's relationship with her father, King Connors. The women in this story are swayed by myth and folklore instead of realizing that they can rescue themselves and be their own hero. It doesn't help that women can't seem to resist Silver, this only fuels Teresa's belief of him being an Aria.

This story may not sit well with all readers due to the incestuous relationship that is the underlying current of the novel. There is so much more going on here, Hoffman explores when when fantasy collides with reality and its repercussions. Teresa must change who she loves and rewrite her story into something real and not forbidden and taboo before she loses herself in myth and fantasy.

During the summer when she was eleven, Teresa believed that the crickets who lived in the weeds that sprang through the sidewalk were trying to speak to her.”

With Alice Hoffman’s brand new prequel to Practical Magic coming out in October, titled The Rules Of Magic (I’m excited) I read Practical Magic again and hence, a few of her older books I keep on my shelf. I initially reviewed this novel back in 2012, it’s been years so I read it again before adding a review to my blog. What I think worked beautifully in this novel is the damage parents can do unwittingly just by speaking of their dreams, telling their stories. Dina’s belief in an Aria coming to take her away when she was young (an outlaw, dark eyes, quiet, that can ride horses even blindfolded to the woman they love and aren’t afraid of anything- warps her own daughter’s heart much in the same way Dina’s longing led her down a bad path. When King Connors came along, she was too young to know he wasn’t the man she conjured up in the image of an Aria. Heeding no one’s warnings, she fell in love with King, the wrong man in the wrong life. “Your father? That big shot couldn’t even stand a little hot weather. I wasted everything on him,” Dina said, dragging a stick over the earth in neat lines. “I was stupid. I was so young I couldn’t see straight.” Teresa’s brother Silver may be the closest thing to an Aria any of them will ever know. Women of all ages fall for Silver, he has the reckless, dangerous appeal that is the fall of many a young woman.
Dina is a shell of the beautiful girl she once was, ruined by the wrong man, Teresa’s father. When the investigator hired by Dina’s father years ago to find her discovers the old man is dead, his conscience drives him to track her down. This sets the family on a strange path, one of return to the past as Dina, with her children in tow, returns home to Santa Fe and the grandmother they never met. But before they depart, her parents fight after finding out about Dina’s father’s death, Teresa slips into sleeping fits, with no medical explanation. Teresa’s mysterious slumber, the scent of roses filling the air, her mother lighting candles surrounding her bed to ward off evil, is this family cursed? Naturally, that Dina’s estranged mother falls for her grandson Silver and cares little for Dina’s other two children, is no surprise. This Silver is a ‘special’ boy, but she sees too his true nature. Can hunger be passed down? For Teresa is hungry for passion and love and her heart is bent the wrong way. It’s not too late for Dina to find love and set aside her foolish, girlish dreams of Arias but is it too late for Teresa to save herself, to untangle herself from the foolish notions her mother has planted in her fertile young mind?
This is a complex story, so much damage and getting things right requires wiping the sleep from her eyes, shucking the family myths. Seems easy, right? Everything is easy to fix in the eyes of onlookers or readers. Just how do this unmentionable things happen in a family?

Understandably an awkward read for some but I don’t think the subject matter would have changed how I felt about the novel if the the Silver/Teresa relationship were approached differently. I have noted there are some people who have read this novel first and have not gone on to read other Hoffman novels, which is a shame because she has written wonderful fiction and they are only cheating themselves. Looking back, if you could read this novel and think about the nature of the relationships, how the mother and her own father’s ‘fantastical ‘ leanings altered the family line, it hits you differently. Naturally for many, reading about an incestuous relationship between brother and sister doesn’t sit well. But looking deeper into the story, it’s more about the mythology we create or are sold about those in our lives, particularly in our own family. If you set aside the forbidden desires, and focus on how we delude ourselves, it stands strong in how we sabotage our own happiness. I won’t summarize nor elaborate, but for those who have not read Hoffman, trust that not all of her novels touch on such a taboo subject. All of them have a touch of magic, that has been a huge draw for me, and her characters are flawed like all of us. For the rest of you die hard fans, mark the date October 10, 2017 when The Rules of Magic will be released.

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I am a fan of this author, but I must say, this was far from my favorite by her. I am looking forward to her new release and hoping it is of the higher quality I expect from her writing. This is not a shining example of her talent.

Alice Hoffman manages yet again to bring a beautiful story to life in White Horses.
White Horses tells the story of a young girl named Teresa who grows up faithfully waiting for her Prince Charming, - an Aria- to come & rescue her from her mundane life. When she is just a little girl Teresa begins to suffer from sleeping spells, at a moments notice she can suddenly fall into a long deep sleep lasting hours upon hours. During this sleep is when her mother tells her the tales of the Arias, her hero that will come riding on a horse across the mesa. These men who wonder through the night living life on their own terms coming & going as they please, men who carry jewels in their saddles & passion in their eyes. Although many little girls day dreaming this same tale, Teresa's tale is quite different. Teresa already knows exactlt who her Aria is, the man who can do no wrong, the man that every girl longs for, the man she feels so passionately for, her brother Silver.
So begins this heartbreaking tale of a young girl who lives her life, dreaming of a lover, she can never truly have, dreaming of a life she can never really have, dreaming of a moment that can never come.