White Horses by Alice Hoffman

A special thank you to NetGalley and Open Road Integrated Media for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For those of you who read my reviews, you know how much I love Alice Hoffman's words. Hoffman could teach a master class. You know those online seminars that you see advertised on social media sites? Well, Alice Hoffman should lead one.

Teresa's mother, Dina, fills her head with bedtime stories of an Aria—a dark-eyed fearless hero on a white horse who would come and rescue her. Aria's are rule breakers and so is her brother, Silver, who Teresa comes to believe is one of these fabled men. Instead of a fairytale, Teresa and Silver's relationship is dark and dysfunctional, not unlike her mother's relationship with her father, King Connors. The women in this story are swayed by myth and folklore instead of realizing that they can rescue themselves and be their own hero. It doesn't help that women can't seem to resist Silver, this only fuels Teresa's belief of him being an Aria.

This story may not sit well with all readers due to the incestuous relationship that is the underlying current of the novel. There is so much more going on here, Hoffman explores when when fantasy collides with reality and its repercussions. Teresa must change who she loves and rewrite her story into something real and not forbidden and taboo before she loses herself in myth and fantasy.

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ALICE HOFFMAN has a BA from Adelphi University and an MA in creative writing from Stanford University.

Hoffman's first novel, Property Of, was written at the age of twenty-one, while she was studying at Stanford, and published shortly thereafter by Farrar Straus and Giroux. Since that remarkable beginning, Alice Hoffman has become one of our most distinguished novelists. She has published over thirty novels, three books of short fiction, and eight books for children and young adults.

Her novel, Here on Earth, an Oprah Book Club choice, was a modern reworking of some of the themes of Emily Bronte’s masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Practical Magic was made into a Warner film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Her novel, At Risk, which concerns a family dealing with AIDS, can be found on the reading lists of many universities, colleges and secondary schools. Hoffman’s advance from Local Girls, a collection of inter-related fictions about love and loss on Long Island, was donated to help create the Hoffman Breast Center at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA.

Hoffman has written a number of novels for young adults, including Aquamarine, Green Angel, and the New York Times bestseller The Ice Queen. In 2007 Little Brown published the teen novel Incantation, a story about hidden Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, which Publishers Weekly has chosen as one of the best books of the year.

Her works have been published in more than twenty translations and more than one hundred foreign editions. Hoffman's novels have received mention as notable books of the year by The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, Library Journal, and People Magazine. She has also worked as a screenwriter and is the author of the original screenplay “Independence Day,” a film starring Kathleen Quinlan and Diane Wiest. Her teen novel Aquamarine was made into a film starring Emma Roberts. Her short fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe Magazine, Kenyon Review, The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Digest, Harvard Review, Ploughshares and other magazines.

She currently lives in Boston and New York.