Summer flowers are magical, and in “The Enchanted Hacienda,” J. C. Cervantes makes that idea a reality. The Estrada women have magic running through their veins, and that magic is most apparent at their flower farm in Mexico, where they grow flowers that are “just” beautiful and flowers that perform beautiful magic. Their gift originated with an Aztec goddess named Mayahuel, who promised that if they would carry out her legacy, each of their female descendants would be blessed with the power to “grow mystical flowers, create enchantments, and to forever protect love, passion, and beauty.”
Each woman in the family is named after a flower: Camilla, Lantana, Rosa. All, that is, except for Harlow, the main character of this novel. Harlow is also the only daughter not gifted with magic, which, it is assumed, is why the goddess that gifted the Estrada family with their magical abilities didn’t provide Harlow with the name of a flower as she did with the other women in the family. When we first meet Harlow, she is being fired from her job in publishing in New York City. Her boyfriend, Chad, is made partner at his law firm and that evening, while attending the celebration, she realizes that her life with him is a sham.
Luckily, her mother and aunt have requested that all the daughters come to the farm for a special occasion, so Harlow gets on a plane and arrives early with a few hastily packed items of clothing. Cervantes describes the lush flower farm and the old Spanish hacienda, “a sweeping gated colonial estate tucked into a lush country hillside.” Flowers grow everywhere, and Harlow provides us with information about every flower that she sees, including the dying lily in the office of the boss who fired her (“Lilium, a flower with multiple meanings from beauty and birth to magnificence and majesty. But in this color, it can only mean dislike, hatred, revenge). When she stops at a flower stand to buy some flowers for her boyfriend, a message for him, she chooses sunflowers. She realizes that he won’t understand their symbolism, which includes devotion, opportunity, ambition, happiness, and good luck. Later, before the event at which she will throw a martini in Chad’s face (deservedly), she remembers that Helianthus also stands for false appearances and unhappy love. She doesn’t realize how appropriate those phrases are until the end of that night.
Once all the family is at the hacienda, her mother and aunt tell them the real reason for the strange invitation. They are leaving for ten days on a vacation together—for the first time in decades. The problem is that there must be a female descendant on the farm for the magic to work, so one of the sisters must stay there while the two are on vacation. Harlow’s sisters have important jobs, and she is recently unemployed, so she would seem the the immediate choice, but the decision is left to magic. Each sister is given a petal to put under her pillow, and the one that turns blue is the one chosen to stay. Of course, it’s Harlow’s petal that indicates she is going to run the farm for a while.
The positive spin is that this situation will give her time to work on a book she’s been wanting to write. Harlow loves books and reading, and her life-long passion has been for writing. Now she will have the opportunity, if she can just figure out what she wants to write. That first morning back in Mexico, she visits the local coffee shop in their charming pueblo and meets a tall, handsome man who asks for her help. There’s just some connection, something special she feels about him.
From there, the story continues with Harlow’s finding her ability to write, solving what could have been a disaster while running the flower farm, helping a woman who was friends with her grandmother, Azalea, and finding a new life and a new beginning for herself. In this lovely novel, Harlow recognizes what she needs to bring her life to fully bloom—and it isn’t Chad and New York City. It’s finding a place to write, a place to enjoy life, a place to smell the flowers and maybe a place to find her own magic. There are twists, there are misunderstandings, there are enchanting scenes and there are enchantments, literally and figuratively — magical flowers included.
This review was first posted on Bookreporter.com.