Charlie Holmberg is a rockstar. I'm loving it! ( )

Layers

At first I wasn’t sure, but the more I read, the more I followed along trying to solve the puzzle of the story. I was not expecting to find that Allemas was who he was or that their punishment would end up being more like a reward, but that’s part of all the layers to the story that made it so good. It ended up causing me to think of it being a Frankenstein retelling and at the same time a lot of other stories and things all in one. It was a deep thinking and feeling book for me, which was part of what I loved.

If you haven’t checked it out, you should. ( )

Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet is, at its core, a fairytale.

Narrated in first person by Maire, a baker who has the ability to saturate her sweets with emotions and abilities which get transferred to the eaters, the novel takes us on her journey to find herself... Literally.

Maire has been living in a small town for a few years having landed there with no recollection of who she is of where she came from. When the town is raided she is kidnapped and sold to a strange man who recognises her but will not enlighten her as to how or where they've met. He enslaves her (pretty brutally at times) and forces her to bake treats for evil uses... A gingerbread house to attract lost children, Alice in Wonderland style size changing cakes, cookies to make slaves work harder, and living boys.

She is also visited regularly by the mysterious Fyel, an apparition who knows her but also refuses to simply tell her the truth of who she is. She must unravel the mystery herself.

And that's pretty much the whole story. I'm mean, I'm not going to give anything away but it's just these things happening a lot of the time over and over while we get small clues to Maire's identy throughout. It's very simply written with a few lovely turns of phrase but, on the whole, pretty unadorned. It felt like it could have been a YA novel although I don't think that's the audience.

The bottom line is that I rather enjoyed it. The beginning had a very ( )

Neat story

A bit obvious in places but some interesting ideas. Parts were very neat; in others bits not sure why they were included. As though he was going in one direction then changed his mind, then changed it back. ( )

I entered into this book expecting a story that was, if not outright based off of other fairy tales, nodded to them. There was a bit of that--referencing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Gingerbread Man, and Hansel and Gretel--but the story was a whole lot more than just that. The main character, Maire, has to solve the mystery of who she is after being captured and enslaved. The story is a bit darker than I expected. Maire's owner, Allemas (etc.), is crazy and psychotic and determined that she not get away from him.

I liked the story well enough but it never quite gelled for me completely. I think it was partly because it wasn't what I had expected going on, and partly because the majority of the book was Maire responding to external stimuli, usually Allemas or Fyel. Very little of the book was actually getting to know her as a character; though she was the point of view character, I didn't have a good sense of who she was. The mystery itself can't sustain the story.

That said, the actual resolution was pretty interesting and unique. I did not much care for the epilogue, which took away from the really awesome ending for me. I understand that it was supposed to be kind of bittersweet (Maire got her wish even though it came as part of her punishment), but it opened up a whole new set of doors that I wanted resolution to. I would have much rather it ended on the high note prior to the epilogue.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley. ( )