One Jar of Magic

Corey Ann Haydu has a talent for using magic to get at truths that are all too real.

In One Jar of Magic, Rose lives in a town that collects magic, and her father is the best magic-collector of them all. On her twelfth birthday, she’s supposed to join him, stepping into her birthright…but at the end of that night, all Rose has collected is one tiny jar of magic.

Her father’s disappointment is a crushing, bruising thing. As she faces the fact that she might not be “meant for magic,” Rose begins to see her family — specifically,… show more.

Haydu is a master at using fantasy as a metaphor for real-life trauma. What I love about One Jar in particular is Haydu’s delicate pacing as Rose, who has always idealized her father, slowly comes to the realization that he’s been manipulating her into believing she’s destined for a special kind of magic and—in an even more devastating betrayal—has made her believe there is only one definition of special. When Rose doesn’t measure up to that definition, she blames herself until the evidence against her father becomes too overwhelming to ignore. It’s a masterful portrait of an abusive parent using… show more.

I began reading this book, thinking it was about magic, but by the time I finished, I realized it was about so much more. I loved how Corey Ann Haydu uses sense descriptions brilliantly in One Jar of Magic to deal with some challenging and emotional topics including identity, family dynamics, and abusive relationships. Her use of sensory descriptions makes these topics subtle and emotionally manageable within the story itself.