When We Were Magic: Full-length Novel

When Claire Dawson, a quietly successful children’s book illustrator living in Boston, returns to her hometown Willow Sound to help her aunt recover from a minor injury, she finds a dusty shoebox in the attic filled with “predictions” she and her childhood best friend Evan Hartley wrote when they were twelve — silly things like “We’ll both learn to play guitar” and “We’ll see a shooting star on the same night.”

The predictions start coming true again.

And the last one Claire barely remembers writing — “We fall in love.”

As Willow Sound prepares for its annual Wish Lantern Festival, Claire and Evan are pulled together by a series of small, uncanny coincidences that feel like the universe nudging them toward something they once believed in.

Except Claire isn’t planning to stay.

And Evan — now a high-school science teacher who no longer believes in magic — can’t risk hoping for something that might disappear again.