Parents' Guide to House of Ivy & Sorrow

Parents need to know that like Transparent, author Natalie Whipple's first novel, House of Ivy & Sorrow blends everyday high-school issues (first love! fast food! misunderstandings among BFFs!) with tales of superhuman powers and cosmic battle between good and evil. Teenage witch Jo is more Buffy and Bella than Sabrina, with two hunky, darkly mysterious guys competing for her affections. There are strong messages of friendship, family, and doing the right thing even at terrible cost to yourself and others. There's also murky cosmology and considerable violence, both in the peril to Jo and her family from dark forces who want to kill them, and in their own version of witchcraft, which seems to involve constant battles, physical and otherwise, with dark forces, and require a gruesome array of body parts (human and animal) to create spells. On the more mundane side of their lives, the teen characters use occasional crude language ("crap" is a particular favorite; also occasional "ass," "s--t," "screw it," and the like). An intense make-out scene is mostly left to the imagination. A core element in the plot is the witches' family structure: traditionally, the craft is passed from mother to daughter, and daughters never know their fathers because their mothers abandon their lovers as soon as they're pregnant.