Reviews

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Review | "Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic" by Meghan Ciana Doidge

The first review of 2015 (is anyone else having a hard time believing it's already the new year?) is over an ebook that, as part of a promotion to push the rest of the series, can be available for free download on Amazon (and who doesn't love free books?).
Anyway, I'll get right into my thoughts, but first, here's the book's Goodreads description:

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (The Dowser, #1)
If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the best cupcakes were dark chocolate with chocolate cream cheese icing, that dancing in a crowd of magic wielders — the Adept — was better than sex, and that my life was peaceful and uneventful. Just the way I liked it. That’s what twenty-three years in the magical backwater of Vancouver will get you — a completely skewed sense of reality. Because when the dead werewolves started showing up, it all unraveled … except for the cupcake part. That’s a universal truth. 

I know, that's not much of a synopsis, and it isn't. It's an excerpt of the very first thing you'll read in the book, but let's be honest, with the title and the cover it's pretty easy to figure out the type of story. There isn't a lack of cute, chick lit, magic books out there. What makes this one worth reading is mostly the fact that it's available for free, if you like it, you can read the others, if not, then all you've wasted was your time.
I liked this book well enough, it wasn't anything too special, but it was entertaining and has me interested enough to not completely write off the idea of continuing the series. Before you get into it though, here are a few of the issues that I had.
Some of the magic (and the magical world elements) are explained in a way that's confusing and clunky. Hopefully it makes more sense as the series goes along, and the story flows nicely so it doesn't hinder the reading too much.
That being said, the storyline itself was slow to start. There was a lot of exposition so the plot didn't pick up really until a little way through the book. 
There was some plot point/history redundance and proof reading/line edit issues.
The further into the story I got, the less polished the writing seemed. Like the author got so caught up in getting the story down that she didn't pay as much attention to her technique. 
The sexual tension in the book was just sort of awkwardly thrown in and thus not really necessary. 
I didn't get to know the characters as much as I would have liked to, even the narrator isn't really open to the readers aside from pointing out some of her quirks here and there.
There are a lot of questions left unanswered for future books to get into, but that goes against other parts of the writing that tried to make the book come across as a tied up ending. Like a story that could be read as a standalone and not necessarily requiring sequels.
Over all, I liked the story. It was cute and quick, definitely a nice, light read. However, if it weren't for the fact that this book is so easily available, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it- purely for the fact that there are so many books out there like this one.

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