The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs is the sequel to Katherine Howe’s first novel, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, which I will admit I did not realize until I started reading it. I read Deliverance Dane over ten years ago, so I kind of wish I had re-read it before reading Temperance Hobbs, but there were enough details in Temperance Hobbs to remind me of what happened in Deliverance Dane. The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs is an okay book. It is not as interesting as The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and I think I prefer Brunonia Barry’s Salem-set novels over Katherine Howe’s (as a side note, I have also read Howe’s The House of Velvet and Glass, which was an interesting novel, but it depressed the hell out of me and so I donated it because I never want to read it again).

A bit of background on Deliverance Dane before I get into Temperance Hobbs: Deliverance Dane is a dual timeline novel, set in 1692 during the Salem witch trials and in the summer of 1991. The novel is about a graduate student named Connie Goodwin who gets roped into handling the sale of her grandmother’s home located near Salem. As she’s clearing out her grandmother’s home, Connie finds an old key in the family bible, and the key contains a piece of parchment with a name written upon it: Deliverance Dane (who was a real woman accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials). This discovery sends Connie on a quest to find out who Deliverance Dane was and to find Deliverance’s physick book (ie. spell book), and while doing so, Connie begins having visions of the witch trials.

Temperance Hobbs is set in the year 2000 and Connie is a professor on tenure-track at Northeastern University when she discovers that she is pregnant. This is not necessarily a good thing for Connie because of a “curse” on the women of her family: when they become pregnant with the next generation, this endangers the lives of their husbands, who end up dying prematurely. This curse sends Connie on another quest, this time to find a spell that will save her boyfriend’s life, as she figures at least one of the magical women in her lineage must have tried to save her husband at some point. In doing so, Connie ignores her mother’s warnings to not look for such a spell and to just let her boyfriend go.

I find the Salem witch trials to be fascinating, and I assumed Temperance Hobbs would be focused on the witch trials like Deliverance Dane is, but it isn’t. The novel does jump back to different time periods as Connie traces her matriarchal lineage, but it is not as interesting as the danger and hysteria of the witch trials. The Daughters of Temperance Hobbs feels like a lot of effort for not much in the way of plot, but I do not think it would be a complete waste of time to read it as it does raise the thought-provoking question of whether you would be willing to sacrifice the greater good for your own desires.