More sweet, upbeat magical realism from Menna van Praag, perfect for fans of "The House At The End of Hope Street" Great characters.

This is a story of magic, love and family. I was sent to a world where dresses can make a person be stronger, know her heart, and understand what path she is to head down, a world where history can be learned just by dreaming. The characters are magical and lovable. The story line moves at a steady and easy pace that pulls the reader in and hold her in from the beginning to the end.

Etta knows that Cora is living a partial life and knows that they only way to help her is to let her heart know the truth and feel the hurt that has been hidden from her for almost her entire life. The love she feels for her granddaughter, Cora, is obvious and huge. Etta is my favorite character. The magic she shares with the women that come into her dress shop made me smile and feel good. She not only wanted them to look good, she wanted them to feel good and confident. While Etta struggles with her own heart break she is able to help so many other women.


I found The Dress Shop of Dreams a charming and lovely book. The bits of magic and mystery pulled me in and didn’t let me go, even now that I am finished I still am thinking about the story and characters. The variety of romances were a great bonus, from the main romance of Cora and Walt, to the side romances including one of fifty years in the making. This is a story I will recommend to anyone looking for a mystical and magical story to fall into.

I enjoyed this book and I adored the idea of sewing magic into dresse. This book has everything, magic, love stories (4 in total) and a crime to be solved which kept me guessing right to the very end. It had so many twists and turns along the way. This book is a definite page turner.

ARC-Netgalley

I enjoyed the "magical" quality of this story. It was fun to read and I loved the characters.

A gorgeous cover and gorgeous novel from Menna van Praag, The Dress Shop of Dreams focuses on scientist Cora and her grandmother's tiny dress shop. Cora's grandmother wants to work her magic on her studious, unromantic granddaughter in the hopes that she will fall in love. This is a wonderful, heartwarming and uplifting novel.

An enjoyable story by new to me author Menna van Praag, The Dress Shop of Dreams could have used more magic to really knock my socks off. The magic that is referred to and inferred throughout this book really doesn’t have an impact on any of the characters and certainly not brought on by Etta. The magic of this story is that it resides within each of the characters and is up to them to reach for it and bring it to life within their lives.

This story is not a fast read. It’s very methodical and moves at a snail’s pace at times. Normally, that would annoy me, but with so many characters and their stories overlapping and intertwining with one another, if this book moved faster than it did, I would have been hopelessly lost.

Parts of this story made me laugh, made me cry and made me so angry I wanted to throw the Kindle against the wall in frustration. The magic awaiting all of the characters was a joy to behold and I had a hard time deciding which character was my favorite.

My Final Verdict: This is not a great book or what I would call “keeper-shelf”, but it was a good story that kept me engaged and interested in the characters and what would become of them all. I recommend this book to readers who have a curious nature about what will happen next.

This is a sweet, charming tale with characters that are easy to love. If you like magic realism and you are looking for a story to take you away from everything, this would be a good book to choose.

I liked the characters right away. This is one of those stories that will transport you away from your daily stresses and make you smile and feel warm inside. The relationships between the characters, (both family and love interest,) are interesting and different from other books. You feel as if you have gotten to know these people within the first few chapters and after that, it is like you have become part of the story yourself.

The magical surprises in this book are many and as the story continues, you find yourself hoping that everything will work out the way you want it to.

This was a great book, with a lot to recommend it.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher as part of the shereads.org blogging program. All opinions are my own.