11-year-old Livie lives on the bayous of Louisiana with her parents and two sisters. Her older sister is about to get married, and her younger sister shares a room with her. As the book opens, Livie's mother is brought into the house from the hospital in a coma. Her father won't have her in the hospital. He believes she needs to be home with the people who love her. Her mother's sister, Aunt Colleen, comes for a few months to help out, bringing her young son along. Livie is wracked with guilt, because she is sure the accident that put her mother in the coma was her fault, but she hasn't told anyone that. She never got along with her mother much, and thinks if her mother didn't hate her before, she will if she ever wakes up from the coma. She's afraid to be around her mother, lying on a hospital bed in the living room, she doesn't understand her older or younger sisters, but most of all she doesn't understand herself. Eventually, she sneaks off in her boat to a traiteur's house (a sort of witch doctor I gather) to see if the woman can help. Livie is given a complicated healing spell that involves, among other things, finding things you love about the person you're healing. What a wonderful book! I pretty much cried through the last three chapters... and it has pretty long chapters for a book aiming at middle grade readers. One of the best I've read in a long time.

To say that The Healing Spell touched me is an understatement, but I can't quite find the words to accurately describe how much I truly adored this book. Filled with lessons, angst-driven at times and completely uplifting at others, it is one of those books that truly made a mark on my life as a reader. From the moment I started the book I fell in love with Livie and her sisters. In fact, this book had the power to transport me back to the days when I too felt like Livie did. Lost, lonely at times, and yet still always loved. My love for Livie started when, as I mentioned above, she reminded me of that tough time between being a child and becoming a teen. At 11 years old, Livie isn't sure where she fits in the world around her. She doesn't quite get the "girlie" things that her sisters do, but she isn't quite comfortable being described as a tomboy either. Watching her navigate this difficult time in her life was so deeply touching. As I watched her make decisions, some good and others bad, I fell more in love with her character. Livie is one of those flawed, realistic characters that I adore. You see the cracks, but you love her all the more for them. As for the story itself, it is pure magic. I think I cried more during this book than any other that I've read, as I contemplated how I came to be the person that I am now. We've all been through what Livie is going through, even if it wasn't the exact same. The sheer honesty between these pages is what really drew me in. Unfortunately, there isn't too much I can say without giving the plot away, so instead I'll gush over the setting! It is so apparent that Kimberly Griffiths Little researched the bayou that she set Livie and her family in. The lush setting jumps off the page at the reader, and I am sure I learned more about Louisiana bayous than I ever knew before. Besides being the perfect backdrop for Livie's story of hope and growth, it is also a fascinating entity in its own right. You can probably tell from my gushing, albeit rambling, review that I really fell in love with this book. I'll be sad to part with my copy when I give it away tomorrow, but I'm looking forward to purchasing one of my own! The Healing Spell will definitely be one of those books that I'll read again. I'm looking forward to it.