"Connie Goodwin is an expert on America’s fractured past with witchcraft. A young, tenure-track professor in Boston, she’s earned career success by studying the history of magic in colonial America—especially women’s home recipes and medicines—and by exposing society's threats against women fluent in those skills. But beyond her studies, Connie harbors a secret: She is the direct descendant of a woman tried as a witch in Salem, an ancestor whose abilities were far more magical than the historical record shows.

When a hint from her mother and clues from her research lead Connie to the shocking realization that her partner’s life is in danger, she must race to solve the mystery behind a hundreds’-years-long deadly curse.

Flashing back through American history to the lives of certain supernaturally gifted women, The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs affectingly reveals not only the special bond that unites one particular matriarchal line, but also explores the many challenges to women’s survival across the decades—and the risks some women are forced to take to protect what they love most."

Acquired via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program.

The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs is a sequel of sorts to Howe's earlier novel, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane. Connie Goodwin, who in the previous book was a grad student discovering secrets within her grandmother's house that were tied to the Salem witch trials, is now a professor seeking tenure at a university in Boston. But when Connie is led to believe that her boyfriend Sam's life may be in danger based on some of her research, she begins a frantic search for answers in order to stop a familial curse.

I don't remember a lot of detail about the Deliverance Dane book, other than that I enjoyed the overall story, but found it lacking in some ways. But I was excited to receive this advanced reader copy of Temperance Hobbs, hoping that this book would elaborate and tie the story together a bit more for me. Unfortunately, that wasn't really my experience.

In fact, I have to wonder if I read the same book as others who have reviewed this one. There were portions that I found interesting and intriguing, but for the most part I was disappointed in this book. I didn't particularly like Connie's character. I found the majority of the story dull and lacking in meaningful content. More than anything it felt very choppy and confusing, with rough transitions and irrelevant details, leaving me to wonder if I'd interpreted something correctly or not. The climax at the end of the book just felt unrealistic to me, and the postlude felt very rushed and incomplete. I don't know. It's hard to describe exactly my critiques of this book, but it seems like it could've been so much more than it was. Granted, this is an advanced reader copy, but in my experience, not a lot is fundamentally changed between an ARC and a final published copy, so I wouldn't anticipate any major revisions.

So much potential here, and a beautiful book cover. But the execution was lacking.

Dropped off in the Little Free Library.

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