After her run-in with a jealous warlock, apprentice baker Anise Wise can’t wait to get back the kitchen where she belongs. But thanks to her brush with death, the land of the living isn’t all cupcakes and marshmallows.
Sugar Spells is the second in the Spellwork Syndicate series and contains major spoilers for the first. However, I read it without having read the first and didn’t feel like my experience suffered. YMMV.
From the title and cover, I expected something fun and saccharine, but what I got was a lot more nuanced and, at times, dark. Anise spends the book confronting the effects of her experience – her magic, which is a backbone of her identity, is different, tainted in her eyes, by what happened to her. It’s a good metaphor for dealing with the aftermath of trauma, though not heavy-handed. Anise deals with a situation designed to wring benefit from her trauma by staying true to herself and also growing and adapting. Looked at from that angle, it’s a timely thing to read for many – women’s trauma is a hot commodity in some senses right now, with others deriving the primary benefit from said trauma’s recitation. To see Anise take control of her experiences and punch back is as soothing as good chocolate. To see her wrest self-development and new power from the experience is positively heartening.
The only real issue I had was the pacing – the beginning was catching me up on the first book, which was fine, but the middle dragged just a little. The last third of the book, however, was absolutely riveting with action, which more than made up for the earlier troubles for me. Still, it’s hard for pacing problems to matter when I happily devoured the book in a single sitting!
Sugar Spells promises rich and colorful fun, and it delivers in spades – with the unexpected acknowledgement that black is a color, too.
I received an ARC of Sugar Spells via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
Rating: 4/5 stars
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