Enchanting prose, imaginative plot, thoughtful characters, perfect pacing, and an all around magical experience to read, especially for prolific bibliophiles.

Lovers of Nathaniel Hawthorne, libraries, cults and Outlander, this is a book for you.

I finished this book whilst camping friends this past weekend and was raving about how much I loved it. Will be recommending this book to friends and fellow readers.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

4.5/5 stars

I'd give this book 3.5 stars (rounded up to 4).

I really enjoyed the first section, about Mia and her mother's lives in the cult. Normally, I adore time travel stories, but the time travel in this one and Mia's relationship with Nathanial Hawthorne weren't ask engaging for me as the rest.

Overall, I'm glad I read it and would recommend it to others - it just didn't quite live up to what I thought/hoped it would be.

LONG time Hoffman fan here, and also a lover of Hawthorne. The idea of the 2 combined thrilled me. Alas, this book is good but not great. The pace was very slow and the time travel aspect just didn't do it for me. The writing itself, as usual for Hoffman, was exquisite.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Alice Hoffman's The Invisible Hour is a beautifully woven story about a young unwed mother, a community with an antiquated and abusive set of rules, and the immensely talented and tortured author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Only Alice Hoffman could create a tale like this one, which travels across time and beyond the realms of possibility. Ivy gives birth to Mia and is forced to allow her to be raised by The Community, but the bond that they have is unbreakable. Mia refuses to follow the path that her mother was forced to follow, and by paving her own way she is able to change the course of history as well as the future.

Hoffman's prose is pure magic and this book is an incredible tribute to readers, authors, and everyone who believes in the power of words.

Alice Hoffman's book The Invisible Hour is so many things wrapped up in her beautifully written prose. It is a story about survival and love, not only for only for another, but for yourself. It is also part historical fiction with a little bit of the mystical thrown in. And in the end, it is a love story to books, libraries and librarians.

The beginning of the story revolves around a modern day cult, The Community, where women are second class citizens and do not have agency over their lives. Ivy winds up with this cult when she runs away from home because her parents are not supportive of her unplanned pregnancy. She gives birth to her daughter Mia who grows up in The Community. Before leaving home, Ivy had a love of reading and books. Books are banned at The Community, but Ivy secretly shows Mia a public library and sparks her daughter's love of reading as well. It is through books and stories that Mia learns of the world beyond the cult she is living in. These books also give her hope and courage.

Mia falls in love with The Scarlet Letter and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This is where the magic comes in. She finds a copy of the Scarlet Letter in her local library with a hand written inscription made out to "Mia". She believes this is her sign to take her life into her own hands. There is some time travel involved, and the reader must suspend disbelief, but the characters are engaging and it is a book you can not put down.

Woven into all of the book is a commentary on the rights of women, as well as the importance of knowledge and books. Librarians are the quiet heroes of this book, and women librarians especially. It is an uplifting and empowering story.

I love anything from this author but this one was a tough one for me. I hated the scarlet letter. So I just couldn’t bring myself to get out of that feeling of being in. English ap snoozing away on it. But the authors prose is there and her story tell weaving powers are alive and well.

When I'm reading an Alice Hoffman book, I know that I'm in for a special experience. The Invisible Hour was no different. It took me a few chapters to really feel engaged in the book but then I was in it. Hoffman's magic is being able to tie together two storylines and weave them together seamlessly.

The Invisible Hour reminds readers about the power of books and the amazing relationship between the author and the reader.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of the book.

Another beautiful, magical story by Hoffman. I loved the premise and I enjoyed the way that Hoffman wove the story throughout time. Thank you netgalley for this arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

Alice Hoffman weaves an enthralling tale of a young girl looking to escape and yet, to belong.

The Scarlett Letter was written a couple hundred years before Ivy was born, and yet, she feel as if it’s her own life she is reading on the pages. Reading was forbidden in the cult like community her mother had brought them too. But Ivy finds a way to read and escape into other realities. She also discovers a way to alter time and finds herself meeting the actual man who wrote her favorite book, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Here she finds the love she had been searching for her whole life. Only, she doesn’t belong in this time.

This story unfolded beautifully and I felt fully immersed in everything Ivy felt. While this takes place in another time, this story seems more poignant now. We read of two very important issues that plagues people back then and that is happening now: book banning and a women’s right to decide. This was story was magically woven into something spell binding and relevant.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never read The Scarlet Letter, but I really struggled to get through The Invisible Hour. It starts out strong in part one detailing life within the Community. Once we get to part two and the time shift to 1837 it fell apart for me. The writing was flowery and kind of poetic sounding but I wanted to bang my head against the wall wishing Nathaniel’s thoughts would just get to the point. The time travel isn’t ever explained and the ending is intentionally vague. I wish the book had been written entirely from Mia’s point of view as a first-person narrative. Nathaniel was too broody.

I want to start off by saying that Alice Hoffman is one of those auto-buy authors for me. I've always loved her prose and enjoyed her characters over the years, especially in the Practical Magic series. Unfortunately, The Invisible Hour is the first time this wasn't the case.

For me, this novel was paced much too slowly. I kept waiting and waiting for the plot to match up with the blurb but the wait was a lot longer than I expected. I found myself rather bored and uninterested until about halfway through the book, at which point I tore through it. Then, the ending just didn't hit right. It's hard to go into detail without spoilers but I will say that if it wasn't a Hoffman book I would have given up much sooner.

That said, the prose is beautiful as always so if you are a fan of the author it might still be worth picking up for you, particularly if you go in with the right expectations.

Note: I received a free electronic edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for the honest review above. I would like to thank them, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to do so.

This retelling of The Scarlet Letter had it's strengths in contemporary times with the link to cults and the #MeToo movement.

The time travel to the time of Nathaniel Hawthorne was the book's weakness.

I love Alice Hoffman, but this was not my favorite of her books.

The cover is gorgeous!

Books with time travel are hit/miss for me. The Invisible Hour was a hit! In the middle I felt a little lost and lost track of where the story was going. It all made complete sense in the last couple chapters. I loved the way that Mia was able to leave Ivy’s story to inspire The Scarlet Letter. The Invisible Hour is a great reminder of much books can impact our lives.

This is Alice Hoffman so be prepared to be swept away by a beautifully written story. And to believe in magic.

While I felt the first half of the story was tighter than the second, I loved it as a complete novel. The imaginings of the life of Nathaniel Hawthorne could've been its own book but this a love story in unexpected ways. And words are magic.

The Invisible Hour is my favorite recent Alice Hoffman book, I loved pretty much everything about it. The story focuses on Mia, the daughter of a single mother named Ivy. Ivy ran away from home after getting pregnant as a teenager and was swept up by a cult and its charismatic leader. Ivy wasn't able to see an escape from her new life, and so Mia grows up in a strictly controlled environment where everything about her is policed. Books especially are not allowed, and so Mia's growing love of her secret trips to the public library in town is sure to get her in trouble if discovered. As she grows up, her favorite book of all is The Scarlet Letter (which she found a copy of at the library, inscribed with a mysterious message "To Mia"). The story of a mother whose choices were taken from her and yet who still loved her daughter fiercely resonates with Mia for obvious reasons.

The story follows Mia as she grows up, gains the courage to run, and becomes an adult. There is also a magical plot in the second half of the book involving time slips and a romance with Nathaniel Hawthorne.

The writing is beautiful (as expected of Alice Hoffman), and I loved Mia as a character. The basic themes of the book center on a woman's right to choose--not even necessarily to choose abortion, but to choose how to have and raise her child, and how to live her life. The story also emphasizes how important it is to accept help when offered, and to accept love even when it is finite. It is shown over and over in Mia's story that love is never a waste, even when it is over.

As I said above, this was one of my favorite Alice Hoffman books. It is a lovely story about making your own choices and opening yourself up to the kindness of the world.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC!

We meet Ivy as a young affluent girl who is naïve and misunderstood by her parents. She finds herself in the family way, her parents are irate, she takes off and ends up unknowingly joining a cult. The cult controls her life and that of her child, making her regret many decisions she has made along the way. She meets an untimely demise (this isn’t a spoiler, you find out she is gone on the first page) leaving her daughter Mia alone living in the “community” and yearning for something more. You see, reading books is not allowed by the cult, but Mia has been sneaking into the local town library.

The story and follows Mia into adulthood after she has escaped the cult, but the cult leader continues to plague her. Here is where you have to allow yourself to believe in magic. She slips through the sands of time by clutching her favorite book by her favorite author in places he had dwelled- Just go with it. She then meets and falls in love with the author himself, Nathaniel Hawthorne, albeit this novel takes place in modern times and Hawthorne died in 1864. She flits back and forth through the timelines a bit, to a very satisfying ending.

It’s a story about women being allowed to make choices about their lives and their future and about the power of books and the written word. This is my first novel by Alice Hoffman and I will say that her writing is lovely. I truly enjoyed her style and her prose. Three stars for me because a few parts of is dragged, especially that section about Hawthorne’s life history which I feel could have been left out of trimmed back substantially.

"Books may well be the only true magic." - Alice Hoffman

Another enchanting book by Alice Hoffman! What an absolute pleasure this book was! I was instantly drawn into this gripping tale about love, family, finding your family, sacrifice, survival, strength, the love of reading, the power of books and the plight of women.

Ivy left her home after receiving poor reactions from both her family and her unborn baby's father. She runs away looking for a better life, what she finds is a "community" with a charismatic leader who turns out to be a wolf in disguise. The community she has joined is a cult in western Massachusetts where books are not allowed, and babies are taken from their mother's and raised in the Nursery. Ivy is crafty and finds time to bond with her daughter Mia. Mia has inherited her mother's love of reading and finds ways to obtain books - one which will save her and change her life in so many ways....

Hoffman also shows what life was like for women in the past, the choices they had to make, the expectations that were placed upon them and how they were living in a man's world. She also shows the power of books and the written word. Books transport readers, comfort, provide food for thought, educate, evoke emotions and so much more.

I have always enjoyed Hoffman's writing and in this book, she is at the top of her game as Mia goes back in time to meet the author whose book saved her life! As always, her writing was beautiful and vividly descriptive. She weaves a little bit of her own magic into this book, and I had no problem taking that leap into the past.

Beautifully written, gripping, and hard to put down!

Thank you to NetGalley for my digital ARC.

WOW! What a read! I will admit it took me the tiniest bit to get into this because it was written in omniscient POV and I don't typically read that style. But I am so glad I did. Very atmospheric. Felt like I was reading a fairytale. Broke my heart, gave me hope, made me think. Truly have never read anything like it. Original plotline. Realistic characters. This one will stay with me.

This book was definitely not what I expected in the best way possible. I enjoyed it so much and I highly recommend it! It was quite the ride!

3.5/5 stars

This book starts by following teenage Ivy who is a bookworm and ends up pregnant. Defying her parents, who want to come up with a fix for the baby, she runs away and ends up joining a puritanical cult. She has her daughter, Mia, and tries to care for her as much as she can under the controlling rule of the cult leader, Joel.

When Mia is a teenager her mom is killed in an accident. She finds her strength from a beloved library book, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, to escape the cult. She’s taken in by two loving librarians, but she is constantly chased and threatened by Joel.

Fast forward to when Mia is in her mid-20s. She continues to be hunted by Joel and can’t rest easy. She is then transported back in time and falls in love with her favorite author. She knows she can’t stay, but she’s scared to go back to her own time too.

This book is very relevant to today following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, inequality of women, and book banning. Sometimes these topics felt a little forced, but it was still sad seeing how Ivy and Hawthorne’s eldest sister were severely limited by their lack of choice. Not much had changed after hundreds of years.

My only other complaint was, similar to Mia, I wish we got to stay back in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s time a little more. I would have loved to see more of Hawthorne and Mia’s relationship and more of the Hawthorne women.

This is a great book. A tribute to librarians and readers everywhere who’s lives are forever changed by a book. All fans of Nathaniel Hawthorne will enjoy this too!

Thank you to Net Galley and Atria books for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.