bookheaven | Entries tagged with magic realism

The Cat Who Saved Books (The Cat Who..., #1)

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this for the popsugar challenge of healing fiction and that's about the only reason I finished this. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad. It was ....forgettable. In a way, it felt like a bunch of short stories hastily knitted together than a cohesive novel. I feel that way because every time we go on another adventure with the cat we have to hear about how he feels about Sayo, how his grandfather felt about books and how he's a Hikikomori which is someone who has severe social withdrawal preferring to never leave their home.

Orphaned Rintaro Natsuki has been raised by his grandfather who owns a small used book store, Natsuki books, and even before grandfather's death,, Rintaro has been evidencing his hikikomori tendencies. Now after his grandfather's death, he is totally withdrawn from school, just going through his grandfather's daily rituals while his aunt (who he doesn't know) is coming to collect the young teen. His class president whose name I've already forgotten. I'm calling her Sayo because it was something like that. Anyhow she is bringing him classwork to encourage him to return to school.

Into this enters Tiger, a talking cat who needs his help to save books. There will be three quests, all of which have the potential to be dangerous and they might not return. In each case they have to convince the person to stop harming books (even though they think they're helping) I do think the author is very earnest in the expressed concern in each case, that no one has time to read any more and books are dying.

On the other hand there is a lot of repetition in this even with Sayo getting drawn into this too. Tiger actually doesn't do much and everything is solved by talking. So much talking. In theory the three people are 'healed' as is Rintaro . it's rather sweet but it's also not nearly as exciting as one would hope.

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The Secret of Orange Blossom Cake by Rachel Linden

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In full disclosure, I have no idea why I requested this from Netgalley and feel a bit guilty because it should have gone to someone who likes contemporary romance. I do not. I think it was the Italian setting (I've been getting into my roots lately) or the magic realism of the cookbook.

The blurb basically gives away most of the plot so I don't need to go over much of that. Jules leaves in a small apartment with her friend Drew and since Covid they've been making cooking videos, her cooking vintage recipes and him dancing in the background but when the tv show producers want only him, her dreams are dashed. To top it over her cookbook publisher wants their 10K advance back if she doesn't deliver on the recipes (they hated their first attempt and I'm SO eyeing that advance. While I never wrote a cookbook I can tell you my publisher never offered me an advance like that, perils of indie publishing I suppose)

Heartbroken, Jules' day gets worse when her overbearing mother wants her to take her half sister, Alex to Italy for the summer to visit Jules' nonna, who is not Alessandra's grandmother as she's a half sister Jules never bothered to get to know (Her mom should never have had one child let alone three). In fact my favorite moment is when Jules introduces Nonna Bruna to Alex calling her a half sister and Bruna verbally slaps her about it.

Jules has reasons for not going to Italy, her father, Bruna's son, died in Lake Garda there but she wants Nonna's recipes to save the day. Naturally she runs into her first love Nicolo, now a lawyer turned olive farmer who is trying to save the family olive farm. And weirdly enough Nonna's cookbook only shows one recipe at a time, whatever one you need most to make your heart's desire to come true that day. And of course the farm is in financial trouble too and needs new caretaker as Nonna and her brother in law Lorenzo too old at this point.

Not going to lie. I was going to give this a weak four star because I'm so out of my genre and that's not the book's fault. It's mine. However, I realized it wasn't the romance or the contemporary setting I didn't like much. It's Jules herself. Loved her sister and Nonna but Jules left me very meh and let me tell you why.

Let's start with money. Jules needs 10K back if she fails at the cookbook. Nonna needs money. But you can NOT keep crying poor if you give Jules not one, but two rich relatives. Mom's second husband is a blindingly rich surgeon but I can see why you wouldn't ask her for money. Jules' sister with the farm and six kids is married to a tech bro millionaire. While you can say there is no reason Sis should bail Jules out (how about nonna? Does she not care about her?) there is NO mention of Jules even thinking to ask. I got to the 50% mark and it never occurs to her to bring it up to her sister. Never occurs to her to ask her boutique farming sister how to work a farm in order to help nonna (and don't get me started on the whole flowy dress, picture perfect sister while working the farm. I've done this work and that doesn't fly). Just a simple sentence or two about why she doesn't want to ask her family for money to help would have helped but as is it's like how foolish are you to not ask your rich sister/mother for help?

Jules is incredibly selfish especially where Alessandra is concerned. So yes, I can see why she'd be upset about how her gold digging mother left her dad and remarried but that's not the girl's fault (and yes of course, this does happen in the real world) Jules' reason for being so indifferent to Alex is when Jules had to live with her stepdad and half sister after dad passed when she was 16 was Alex didn't bond with her. The girl was 2. Jules has been carrying a decade long grudge because a two year old didn't react the way she wanted her to. And she keeps being rather awful to her, making it clear Alex is a burden (until she realizes Alex's TikTok and photography savvy will help her career)

And Jules really makes zero character growth and has little agency until like the last 20% of the novel after everyone basically knocks sense into her (Nonna, Nicolo and Alex) after they're all fed up with her. The whole ending really is not her idea (it's Alex who comes through there) and while I'm not sure telling the world about this cookbook was smart, I was also disappointed in the idea that she had to choose Italy or LA. It's not like you shoot cooking shows 365. Never occurs to her to spent a month or two in LA and live in Italy....

I wanted so much more out of Jules and never got it. Notice I haven't mentioned Nicolo, mostly because he's stock romance love interest and in the days between me finishing this and me sitting down to review it, I've forgotten most of his scenes.

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Within This Darkness (Douro-Zamośc Trilogy)

Within This Darkness by Chris Tomasini

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was one of my netgalley arcs that somehow slipped through the cracks, didn't show up on my list until August. It debuted in February.

I liked this a lot. There are some clunky passages and it has that head hopping style (that doesn't bother me but I know it does bug some people). It's in two different time periods, one being from WWI through to WWII and the other is 2017 Canada.

The interwar period storyline centers on five Polish sisters, the Obaras who can do magic. They can teleport between locations like the X-Men's Nightcrawler (if they can picture it they can go there) and the rest of the magic seems to be if they can imagine it, they can do it (within limits, for example they never master flight). Eva, especially, is working as a spy for the military. Agata is as well and it opens in media res with them trying to save her.

Only Agata has done some spell that has put her in suspended animation, alive, unaging but unable to awake. Her sisters are looking for the near mythic Walker who might be able to save her.

In 2017 Jeremy is a teenaged boy trying to deal with some heavy things. His great aunt Kasia's beginnings of dementia, his mother's over protectiveness and his father, a wildlife biologist studying wolves, being on a job far away. The latter two are trauma responses after the death of Jeremy's sister, Anne, a few months before. Jeremy luckily survived the car crash.

Jeremy also has a way with wolves and tries to rescue them. He's also not in school (bereavement leave) and spends a lot of time in the woods, leading to a discovery about his family, his past and himself that he wasn't expecting.

Also there is Agent Shambling, military, who knows about the sisters and their magic and believes the Douro legend involves them and he can solve it. He might know more about the sisters than their remaining family does. This also means that he is so obsessed that he has no qualms about trying to force Great Aunt Kasia into things and kidnapping some kids.

Jeremy and the sisters are all interesting characters. I liked how the story unfolded. I very much liked the stuff in the wars with the sisters. I don't know how much more we'll get of that in the next two books but if Tomasini decided to write a prequel with just them, I'd be there for it.

I thought the ending might have been a bit too easy but in the end, Shambling is more obsessed and making bad, rash decisions than he is truly evil (for now at least) I would like to see book two.

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Disco Witches of Fire Island by Blair Fell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a 3.5 read for me rounded up. I know there are going to be some that this will anger, especially the younger crowd. This plays in to hard the gay club scene in the 80s where some of the negative gay stereotypes come from (i.e. sleeping around with multiple partners.) I remember this. I was a doctor in NYC about 4 years after this novel is set. I saw the devastation of AIDS and had to give countless HIV diagnoses.

And make no mistake this is NOT a book of queer joy. Oh there's some of that there but it about their agony as HIV destroys their world. And one of the hardest hitting lines was about how the entire country came together to find out what happened to a few dozen people who died of Legionnaire's disease but the same could not be said when thousands of queer people were dying. I also remember doctors refusing to see HIV infected people. I had no respect for them. I was not one of them and yes I was exposed to HIV while in NYC (I got lucky)

Content warning. HIV infection/death, loss of loved ones, grief, drug use, casual sex, suicidal ideation

The main character is Joe, a young Armenian would-be doctor who lost his lover, Elliot to AIDS and his new friend, the Fabio-look alike, Ronnie who has the big idea of we're going to bartend on Fire Island and find us some rich boyfriends. All Joe really wants is to get away from himself and his pain and gets talked into it only to find out Ronnie didn't have all his ducks in a row.

Homeless and jobless, Joe is taken in by two year round residents, Howie, rather a hippie and Lenny, a bondage guy, both of whom are middle aged house cleaners and two of the titular Disco Witches. They give him a home and find him a job working with Vince, a truculent Irish bartender who works for an old woman who has this bar and her home open to dying AIDS patients with the help of her friend D'Norman, a nurse (both of them are also witches)

It follows Joe and Ronnie over the summer. We spend most of our time in Joe or Howie's heads with occasional journeys into Ronnie, Lenny and a few others. We have Scotty Black, the biggest club owner trying to destroy Joe's place of business. We have the Disco Witches who are as they sound, a group of queer folk who believe in the Great Mother Goddess who is good and needs to be in balance with the Great Darkness which is not. Their leader, Max, is dying of AIDS sequelae and their group of twirling disco queens is falling apart and Howie fears that the Egregore a mystical villain who will kill one of the holy lovers if he can is back on the island.

We the reader know things Howie doesn't (such as Joe has been lying and he fits the holy lover rubric and he's been seeing the Egregore) We can also guess who is going to fulfill the role left when Max dies. I loved Howie and Lenny. Joe I wanted to slap half the book.

This is a pile of angst with a happy ending. I won't ruin it but I will say it doesn't end badly. The Disco Witches will dance another day.

Now for the problems because yes there are some beyond the above mentioned casual sex. But honestly that IS the biggest problem for me because it goes on and on and on. The author thanks his editor for helping carve this down to something readable. Yeah, it needed carved down more. It's overly long and it began getting repetitive with Joe constantly beating himself up over Elliot and then Fergal, someone he met on the Island. Some of the metaphors were pretty tortured and this is the horniest bunch of people gay or straight I've ever seen. It did get to be a bit much. Still, I am glad I read it though it brought me back to those times and the people I lost in the late 80s and early 90s to AIDS, to exposure fears and just how easy it is to victimize an entire group of people unjustly.

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When the Bones Sing by Ginny Myers Sain

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received an arc from Netgalley. I loved this story. Set in a very small town, Lucifer Creek (named for the sulfurous stench it puts out), Dovie has a special matrilinear gift; she can hear/feel the bones singing. The sheriff has been putting this to good use in helping to recover lost hikers on a major hiking trail through the Ozarks. In the last three years over two dozen hikers have gone missing and the town is oddly quiet about it. Well, not so odd when one considers without the hikers bringing dollars into the town the town doesn't exist so they're hushing up a serial killer.

Dovie's best friend from her earliest days, Lo(wan) returns from wherever he ran off to still haunted and frantic. He claims the ghosts of the murdered and buried hikers are after him and he must solve the mystery of their deaths. Dovie doesn't believe in ghosts or religion or the Ozark Howler (in spite of her father a glass artist making a huge one for his friend's massive lodge (a very poor local boy made very good and generous to the town).

Also in the story are Dovie and Lo's grandmothers former friends who fell out after Lo's mother was drowned in Lucifer's Creek and Dovie's mother disappeared. And we also have the hell and brimstone preacher who is turning the town against the kids as witches and Xan a young man who I don't want to spoil.

I found Dovie and Lo captivating. While I did figure out most of the mystery I think the red herrings were deployed to great advantage in this. The stakes are high as more and more hikers are disappearing and waiting for Dovie to find them. Are her friends and family involved? What about their missing moms (something else I did figure out but again enjoyed the journey to the conclusions) There were twists I didn't predict which is always a delight and I found the end very satisfying. I thought the setting was rich. You could practically feel the heat, humidity and the bugs. I love it when an author takes a rich setting and makes it almost its own character. It brings something extra to the story.

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You Must Not Miss by Katrina Leno

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had such mixed feelings about this one. It started out strong, foundered in the middle and I didn't like the end at all. In some ways it doesn't quite match the blurb and the title makes no sense whatsoever. (though I don't blame the author for that one. She might not have been the one to choose it).

Magpie Lewis starts off sympathetically enough. Her life has imploded. She caught her dad cheating on her mother with her mother's sister (and the family believes the aunt about the events of that day), her mother reverted back to her alcoholism as a result, her older sister has cut her out of her life for her own mental health and abandoning Magpie to deal with their mother's drinking until Maggie is 18 and can leave too. She got drunk herself at Brandon Phipp's party and did something to cause her to do something that made her best friend Allison to stop talking to her (Brandon is Allison's boyfriend so you can figure out what this is)

She's left making new friends with the other h.s. outcasts: Clare (whose father committed suicide) Luke (gay), Ben (trans masc and Magpie's potential love interest) and one more whom I've already forgotten because basically the book did too. Honestly these were good friends (expect Clare constantly insisting they all had to go to Brandon's next party even knowing what happened to Magpie the last time)

The only adult on her side is her english teacher who keeps giving her more changes to not fail his class and the school year than Magpie probably deserves. Her mom is busy drinking herself to death and her dad is out of the house. Her grandma and the rest of mom's family has cut her out.

Magpie has been writing in her yellow notebook about the town of Near which unlike the town she lives in Farther, is kind and empty of people and no one will ever abandoned her there. And then it becomes real. Her guide to this place is Hither a shape shifting speck of ether? Magpie's power? and that's where this begins to bog down.

Frankly the cover and the blurb talks about female rage (I'd like to think any child with all this going on would be enraged regardless of gender) and we don't really see that in believable ways or maybe it's just me. This rage seems to be let me fail out that'll teach them and let me be disengaged with my new friends because they're not the amazing Allison.

Magpie is actually rather unlikeable. I might be sympathetic toward her but I don't like her or what she does, especially at the end when that rage is first turned against her teacher who had the audacity of enforcing consequences for her lack of actions. The ending is weird, confusing and anticlimatic which is all I can say without spoiling it. The story was interesting but I also found it pr oblematic

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Basil and Oregano by Melissa Capriglione

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really wanted to rate this four star but man, that ending. It was so rushed and had problems that I'll get into later. I think some of the issues in this is because of the limits of traditional sequential art publishing. You have X number of pages, fit it in there or it doesn't get told. This might have been better as a webtoon where the pace could have been slowed down and the characters developed. So many of the characters are so underdeveloped they feel like they're there for diversity's sake and no other reason.

Our point of view character is Basil, a young girl who has to get Top Student rating or else her two dads get a 200K bill for her tuition. There is no explanation as to why a magical culinary school is priced so only multimillionaires can afford it and one of the weak parts of the final chapters are almost everyone is on scholarship so why aren't Basil's besties Villy (non-binary) and Addy (trans black girl) taking this more seriously? Why isn't everyone cutting each other's throats and not just Xynthia who is your typical mean girl. We have no idea until the end she's doing it because she can't afford school either. She just comes off as your typical high school snobby mean girl. In fact the only other mention we have of price is the coffee house girl who longs to go but can't afford it.

On day one Basil and her buddies meet up with the new student Arabella Oregano, daughter of a famous/rich magiculinary artist. Basil is immediately smitten with Arabella and the bulk of the graphic novel is divided between their cooking classes, their romance and Xynthia's snobby bitchery.

Until a) we find out Arabella's secret b)Xynthia and Basil find out too. Now Basil has to make a choice and if she chooses Arabella and it's discovered she'll be tossed out the competition and will need to come up with two hundred thousand dollars. Xynthia on the other hand decides she can't just go tell the teachers (why not we have no idea because this feels like something easily proven) but instead decides to take an elaborate revenge plot approach.

And this is where everything falls apart for me and why I couldn't go to 4 stars. I can live with Villy and Abby being half forgotten (sad but this is Basil and Arabella's romance saga so... still they should have been better developed) Xynthia's spell proves there's more than food magic out there so why is food magic so important to these kids? Arabella would rather cook the old fashioned way but no one does that any more. Why? Does everyone have some level of food magic? Then why is this school so crazy expensive?

I could live with that too but as expected Xynthia's spell goes horribly awry and people could have been killed. It's only because of Arabella that they don't. The teachers do squat all (other than to try to clear the food festival grounds to people aren't hurt and then...maybe they'll do something).

Okay consider there to be minor spoilers from here out The teachers DO have offensive magic but the students aren't at that level yet. Um WHY would a freaking chef need combat magic? And honestly how hard would it be to squirt hot pepper juice into someone's eyes? We see them doing similar things while cooking.

Now I expected Basil and Arabella to triumphant because this is a YA romance and they're our heroes but the final chapter is such a let down. Yes they succeed but NOTHING happens to Xynthia. Even before her lame apology to Basil (her family life is in turmoil and she can't afford this school either, which fine yes that will cause people to act out but it's also not an excuse for nearly killing people), she's right there are the end of festival/end of school term meeting. She faced zero consequences for her actions. Cue me screaming into the void. I get so tired of this. You do shitty things and people just shrug it off. Fine, Basil can be the bigger person and forgive but why did the school not expel Xynthia for nearly killing everyone at the festival or at least trying to ruin her competition so she could win?

And the other star-losing plot point is the school said oops no one won the festival (because it was ruined) no one gets top student so you ALL owe tuition. WTF? First off only 2 students top can get the scholarship (because you have to be top student in two quarters, see what I mean by why aren't more students out to destroy their classmates) and now everyone is on the hook for the money. The students revolt in a passionate why are you hurting your future by destroying us and the school goes hmm you're right, no tuition for anyone. What? laughs. This was so dumb. And all the wealthy donors sitting in at this festivity are all you know what, kids be right here I'll pay for them. And then the poor kid from the coffee house is there 'wooo I can go to this school now.' Why is she there? Is she catering this event? The end is such a hot mess.

There is a sweet epilogue though. Overall, this is sweet, cute and I'm glad I read it but the world building and pacing required some work. I really enjoyed the art. It fits the tone of the story and it's very well done. We also get a diversity of body types which we don't always see.

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Elixir by Frank Barbiere

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More like a 2.5 read. I see a lot of reviewers liked the art but I wasn't thrilled. The muddy chiaroscuro style isn't to my tastes. The idea here is we're in the point of view of the 'Druids" is some future setting where the Techies are ruining the world. There is nothing much new to this story line and others have done it better.

Because the world building is muddy too. We don't get a good grasp on why the Druids hate tech other than it's bad and exploitive. The blurb tells us this but we honestly don't really SEE it in the story so that's a failing. When one of their members, Claude's, son needs a mechanical heart he's ostracized and goes rogue (and seriously WHY does his fake heart look like he's trapped in an iron lung? We have better artificial hearts currently). Claude was the mentor of Mara (and her sister and her best friend) so of course Mara has to go after him.

Her mother specializes in gas lighting and is the leader of the Druids. Claude (and Mara/Mara's mother) are after the titular elixir as it's a panacea to destroy all tech or all magic depending on which group gets it. Where it is from, why hasn't it been used etc are all questions you're not getting answered. I'm sure more happened but it wasn't memorable enough for me to work it in to this review. I'm just glad it was a library book

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We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

It hurts to rate this so low. Usually I'd bail on something before this but I was reading it for a challenge and I kept thinking I'll get into it. 80s nostalgia, girl power, magic, all of this is in my wheelhouse. I just couldn't get past the things bothering me.

For one, it has a strange choice in narration. It's like someone doing a voice over...for the entire book. Which of the girls is this? We don't know. And then it breaks that narrative by including points of view that they should have no way of knowing (like the thoughts of one of the girl's father's for example) It keeps the reader at a distance.

But for me the killer was how amazingly overwritten this whole thing is. First we have the weird quirk of almost always referring to every character by full name every time (Mel and Little Smitty being exceptions) And everything is so over described it's dense and wearying to wade through. Tell me they dropped their dufflebags, no need to tell me everything that's in them unless it's important later. Everything is described at least three times in a row so if the narrator wants to say something is hot as a summer's day, add in at least two other analogies more often than not.

By fifty pages in we know they're wearing a strip of blue sweat sock on their arms, no need to bring it up every other paragraph. Ditto Jen and her 'claw', her overly teased up 80s bangs. We get it. No need to make it its own character in the book. By the time we really got into the magic, I was fatigued by the prose and no longer cared.

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Bedknob and Broomstick by Mary Norton

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'll be honest one of those stars is because it's become an endearing classic. I don't remember much about the movie other than it had Angela Lansbury and music. I read over the wiki before writing this and let me say kudos to Disney for rewriting most of this. In fact the book and movie aren't much alike, nothing new there, however the movie is better. Even in the 60s they knew better than to include some of what's in this book (and also learned in 96 they rereleased this with all the cut scenes reinserted so I might like to find that).

Anyhow, when you're reading old classics, you unfortunately expect the casual racism but it's pretty bad in this kids' book. I'll talk more about this as I go. This was actually two novellas The Magic Bedknob and Bonfires and Broomsticks mushed together (which makes sense)

The first is set in the blitz (which actually isn't all that clear in the book but to be fair when this was written, it would have been clear). The kids, Carey (who is around your age, literally what it says so probably 11-13), and she's the only girl, the middle brother, Charles and the six year old Paul have been sent out of London to an aunt's place in the country for safety. They help Miss Price when she falls off her bike only to learn that Paul has seen her flying on a broom stick.

Price is much more menacing in the book, wanting to be the wicked witch but unable to pull it off. For some reason gives the youngest kid the powerful bed knob (in exchange for their silence on her craft) that can go anywhere in the world or back in time. In book one they take the book first to London to see mom (doesn't work out well) and the second time Price thinks I should probably go with them.

And they go to an island (which is populated by anthropomorphic animals in the movie) filled with cannibals. Yes, you guessed it, every negative black stereotype you can think of was in here. They're mostly naked, savage, dim witted black people who dance around and threaten to eat Price and the kids. The edition I selected here was the one my library had (literally from 1957) has art in it and praise for it capturing the book's essence. It certainly captures the racism. Little Black Sambo has nothing on this art where they're mostly black ink, hair and white eyes. It's amazingly cringeworthy (so yeah even with the casual racism in Disney movies in the 60s, they dumped this nightmare out of the movie).

In the end they barely make it out alive, trash the bed and the aunt sends them away for being awful and that's how it ends, with a kids' suck message and punishment. The second half (the other novella) is two years later. Auntie is dead and the kids have figured out that Miss Price has placed an ad to have kids come room with her in the summer. They go there only to learn she's burned all her books on magic and they are so disappointed she gave it up.

However, she bought the bed at Auntie's estate sale and let's the kids use it, again unsupervised (child safety not a thing in the 1940s apparently). They go back in time a few hundred years to find a failed wizard/alchemist type and they bring him to the future (their present). Shockingly it goes bad (literally every time they use this bed it does, probably should have set it on fire or something). And when they take him back they made it worse (hi, witchcraft at the end of the middle ages/renn period is likely to get you killed) and Miss Price has to step in again.

It has another bittersweet ending and the final actions making you wonder if Price forgot she turned Paul into a frog on their first visit (doing so with Emelius would have been so much easier but then we would have lost out on the Substitutiary Locomotion spell which is way less important in the book than the movie).

It's another classic where I can say, I'm glad I finally read it but at the same time, didn't particularly enjoy it.

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Ill-Fated Fortune: A Magical Fortune Cookie Novel (Magical Fortune Cookie, 1)

Ill-Fated Fortune: A Magical Fortune Cookie Novel by Jennifer J. Chow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley for the arc of this magic realism mystery. For me this is rounded up from 3.5 stars.

Felicity Jin's family legacy is being able to bake their happiness into their signature pastry. Mom keeps Gold Bakery afloat with pineapple buns and egg custards among other things. Felicity hasn't evidenced any ability in this arena and the young woman's role in life is a bit shaky until she finally discovers her pastry: the fortune cookie. Even more awesome in her eyes is that she seems able to write fortunes that come true. This joy lasts until the fortune cookie king is found dead in the dumpster behind the bakery with a grim handwritten fortune. Naturally Detective Sun makes Felicity the prime suspect (also probably worth mentioning, in Pixie, CA, the Jins and Felicity's bff, the florist, Kelvin work in the predominately Asian part of town and Sun is from nearby Fresno).

Trying to clear her name and given that her worry over being the prime suspect is affecting her magic, Felicity starts poking around, leading her to a Chinese restaurant and some Asian markets (all of which she wants to try to set up her cookies with) and to the dreary factory, Smiley Fortunes, owned by the self-crowned cookie king. She finds no end of people with motives, especially since his cookies suck and he was a nasty boss. However, convincing Detective Sun of this isn't easy.

Woven into this is another victim of his crappy cookies, a bride to be whose bachelorette party ended up with severe food poisoning to the extent her wedding had to be moved and she's suing, starts arranging her wedding do -over with Kelvin (which brings him even more fully into the mystery).

The mystery itself wasn't bad. There were enough suspects though a few more might have worked out better. We don't really get a good feel for Detective Sun though. I really liked Kelvin. Felicity isn't bad either, though she does tend to whine a bit.

On the negative side, I think the 'oh is my magic gone' scenes are a bit repetitive (there seems to be quite a few of them at least) and I was a little confused at the killer's motivation (or at least why didn't they turn to the cops as some of what Cookie King was doing was sketchy to say the least).

I would, however, read another one so that says something for the series.

As a side note, not taken into consideration in the review, I'm not sure what was wrong with my arc but hopefully when this releases into the wild, Minotaur has this fixed. About four chapters in my e-copy had issues. It would repeat one page and then the following page was missing (so instead of it going pg 1-2-3 I'd get two page 1s no 2 and right on to 3). That was annoying but that's not the author's fault.

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The Enchanted Hacienda by J.C. Cervantes

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My library set up unrealized expectations shelving this in fantasy as it's magic realism/romance which is so not my thing. Also it suffered a bit in comparison to another book I was reading at the same time with the same set up, an all female family where everyone has magic. Except apparently Harlow, the lead in this story. All of her family have the name of the flower they embodied whispered to their mother's by one of the old goddesses in Mexican/Aztec culture. Everyone but Harlow, whose name means heap of stones so she believes she's magicless.

And when her world collapses after losing her dream job and realizing her fiance is both a bit misogynistic and racist, she flees home to the titular hacienda in Mexico where her family grows amazing flowers, makes normal flower arrangements and for a select clientele uses magic to assist them. They encourage Harlow to lick her wounds and finally write that book they all know will be so amazing (based on what I have no idea)

Harlow reminds me of that person in the writing group, you know the one. Every writing group has one, the one who can't write because they don't have the right space/the stars aren't aligning/the time of year is wrong etc etc. So she does a lot of whining about it. Harlow whines about a lot of things.

And then comes Ben, the uber hot guy from Canada whose grandparents knew Harlow's grandparents and had met at the hacienda. Ben's tall dark mystery and did I mention hot? No, don't worry Harlow will...like every chapter. Just once I'd like to see a romance where they're average but they're smart or funny or make the other person's life better for being there instead of OOOOO soooo hooooottttt. So Harlow and the cliche are very obviously going to get together and I'm not being overly harsh here. Ben is never really allow to grow much beyond the tall dark and handsome cliche. the most unique thing about him is yes he's a millionaire (or will be once he inherits) son of a hotel empire and all he wants to do is make boutique hotels that support the environment or blend into it or something.

Magic hijinks ensues with much angst. I had mentally checked out by the end. Honestly if romance is your thing, you'll probably like this. For someone who came for the fantasy elements I was disappointed.

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cornerofmadness

Camp Arcanum by Josef Matulich

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I got this from the author several Ohioana book fests ago and it should have been right up my alley with a renn setting (kind of) and Paganism but I had some serious issues with some of this. Marc Sindri is a contractor hired to clear a large wooden area in Arcanum Ohio which has a large pagan population to make a renn fair. He has a very short time frame for this project and he's assisted by his two employees (friends?) Michael the gay artist and Eleazar, the over-sexed jongleur. As they set up their encampment of Airstream campers, they run into Brenwyn the head witch in town.

The first half of this book is the budding relationship between Brenwyn and Marc where he doesn't believe in magic but the reader knows her magic is very much real. What we learn quickly is Marc fears schizophrenia which claimed the life of his brother (content warning, suicide) It doesn't help that Brenwyn starts talking about Qliphotic beings which is what his brother was terrified of. they are from Kabbalah but Marc didn't know that. Also in town is the wealthy wizard Jeremiah, who wants to bring some cosmic horror into the world.

I almost wished Matulich had spent more time on Jeremiah and his plans because it would have been more interesting that way. I didn't care for Brenwyn and Marc's relationship and I think that's down to some heavy duty stereotypes especially for Marc. He's a 'man's man' that rough and rugged 'real man' vibe that I find so off-putting. I really wanted to slap him into next week. He's all about power tools but really he IS a tool.

In both senses of the word and that's the problem. In the jerk sense of it, he drives me nuts and in the working side of things, Marc is a magically tool. His noumena acts like a magically booster which is why Jeremiah wants to use but and taunts Marc that that is the reason Brenwyn wants him.

Naturally rather than talk to her about whether or not this is true, he tells her to piss off and nearly dooms everyone. Eye roll. And honestly if any man spoke to me like he did, I wouldn't be hiding out in my shop/home weeping and moaning about it like she did. That would be a man I'd cut out viciously. Also the blurb calls this a love triangle. I disagree (or at least it's only in Jeremiah's head) because Brenwyn is 100% over him. Speaking of love, Brenwyn and Marc start saying it way too fast for me, like after one true (and disastrous) date.

I can also see hints of Ash (Evil Dead) in Marc, especially with his choice of a shovel to go after demons and cosmic horrors. There is supposed to be humor in this, and there is some, especially if you like bro-humor. It wasn't a bad story, more like not-a-me story.

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