Spells for Forgetting

Emery is one of the novel’s two protagonists. She is, in some ways, a foil to August, as they took contrasting paths after planning to leave Saoirse Island. While August found the freedom that they were both looking for—albeit not in the way he was expecting—Emery remained stuck in the rhythms of their small community. She inherited her family tearoom and carried on the Blackwell tradition of brewing mystical blends for tourists, fitting easily into the role for which she was born in a way that elaborates on The Influence of Ancestral Heritage.

Emery has several complex key relationships across the novel, most significantly with August; they grew up in the same small island town and, once they became teenagers, fell in love. Both later acknowledge that their love was something that transcended adolescent hormones: It was something deep and wild that neither had the mental or emotional maturity to understand, which contributes to the novel’s exploration of The Power of Love and Obsession. The novel suggests that their love is the artificial result of a desperate spell, but what their love would have been without it is left up for interpretation.