Kate Baray

Despite the rather plentiful meh reviews this book has gotten, I had a lot of fun reading it. It is light-hearted, quirky and with a bit of a different take on the vampire transformation. Mallory seems to be the kind of girl that has it all, but nothing at the same time. She owns a fancy Audi sports car and a nice apartment downtown, but has to slog through a job she detests out of a huge fear of ending up homeless.

Worse, she has a really hard time forming friendships with her neighbors and coworkers even though not all of them are bad people. And so she does things she doesn't really like to do with the hope that people will start to like her.

Everything goes to hell when she blacks out after having two drinks and wakes up in her condo with a sickly thin body and no memories of what happened that night. And so she begins a self-journey to find people that can help her and solve the mystery.

Now, I like Mallory and feel guilty of identifying with her at times. She isn't evil, but she overthinks about her own personal problems and has a real hard time acting amicable towards other people. And so people that don't know her think she is rude and cause an endless cycle of rejection that makes her feel even worse. Mallory is definitely not a Mary Sue, but as she befriends a guy named Alex that seems to know a lot about what happened to her, she starts to open up more, create healthy boundaries and people for once start to like her for the first time ever. Heck, she is also quite brave!

Typos are not abundant in the book, but I do feel like the prose would have been better if an editor had helped "clean up" some of the more confusing paragraphs that are too wordy. The beginning of the book makes you falsely assume Mallory is poor and yet she drives a fancy sports car. Huh? It isn't even a used one, it's a brand new car! The scenes of the final battle gets a bit confusing too.

I also felt the book didn't really up the stakes towards the finale. You feel like you are in the middle of the novel and then BAM! final battle erupts with no warning. This book suffers from the syndrome of "don't tell the MC about lots of important general knowledge everyone is supposed to know." Yup, just like the Harry Potter books, Mallory isn't fed very reliable information about what happened to her from the people that are supposed to know and then act all surprised she freaks out when something completely preventable happens to her. I think that is the only thing I didn't like about the book.

However, I enjoyed the book and would enjoy reading the sequels sometime. Very cute read.… (meer)

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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“How do you kill a person with a cupcake topper?”

“When it’s drenched with as much raw magic as yours are, so many different ways.” Sabrina ticked off options on her fingers. “As a potion additive, as part of a ritual, ingested by the magic-user to add to their own power. Yeah, those are probably the top three.”

“Yours was used to create a potion which was then added to a beverage the victim drank, from what we can tell,” Miles added helpfully.

I really didn’t feel so good.

WHAT'S CUTTHROAT CUPCAKES ABOUT?
Lina's having a slow day in her store—a year-round custom-made candy store with a Halloween theme—when everything she knows about her family, herself, and the world as a whole changes.

Lina discovers that magic is real and that she's a witch in one of the worst ways imaginable to learn these things—by being arrested by a supernatural cop for killing someone with an item you cursed.

This cop is a wizard with the International Criminal Witch Police who has a certain amount of leeway in his jurisdiction—since he's easily convinced that Lina has no idea how she may have cursed the candies in her shop, he offers to cut a deal with her—if she helps to track down the person who used her unintentionally cursed items, he won't pursue charges (ignorance of the law yada yada yada could still get her a few years as an Accessory). Apparently, once you know what you're looking for it's easier to find traces of your own magic than it is to find someone else's, so it makes sense to recruit Lina into this investigation, even if she doesn't know anything about the magical side of things.

Lina's curious about this whole witch thing, desperate to not be convicted of a crime—and fairly attracted to this detective, truth be told. So she puts her store in the hands of a new (witch) acquaintance for a few days and takes the offer.

THE BOISE-NESS OF IT ALL

“The three of you are it? For the entire city of Boise?”

Bastian huffed. “City? Town.”

“Hey, now. No smack-talking Boise.” I’d only lived here five years, but that was long enough to recognize that the place definitely had its charms.

“I’m not talking smack. I’m stating a fact. It’s a town, not a city. But to answer your question, the three of us cover the greater Boise area.” His lips pulled into a grimace. “Insomuch as there is a greater metro area.”

You know right away that this is some sort of fantasy—there's no way that a homemade candy shop—particularly a Halloween-themed candy shop—survives in downtown Boise for as long as Lina's has. Yes, the idea is appealing, but it's easier to buy the idea of the magic, to be frank.

Outside of that, putting this series in Boise helps ground it—Lawley has some good fixed locations for things and is able to use that geography to her advantage. But no one who is unfamiliar with Idaho's capital is going to suffer for it—it's a nice bonus for those of us who make the same drive as Lina does to know how long it takes so we know how long the uncomfortable silence (or whatever) will be. But that's about it.

THE COZY FACTOR

I drank my exceptional espresso with exactly the right amount of cream and tried to keep my annoyance at recent events to a minimum. Nothing like a rotten mood to ruin good caffeine.

This is pretty "cozy" on two fronts—the magic and the mystery. We only get very broad brushstrokes about magic, how it works, what it can/can't do, the society of witches/warlocks/wizards, and so on. Lawley gives us enough details to keep the story moving. We do get to see some magic at work, and get a sense that some ritual and effort is necessary—but Lawley's not coming at this like Butcher, Rowling, or Harrison.

The mystery part of the book is solidly in the cozy area as well—we've got a candy store owner, a detective who works out of a coffee shop, and a whole lot of generally nice people (even a suspect or two are pretty nice when you get to know them).

The effect of both of these is to make you as comfortable as if you're relaxing with one of the some of the drinks and treats described while the world passes by.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT CUTTHROAT CUPCAKES?

Maybe I should have dithered, asked for more information, heck, even asked for the questions first. But this was the guy who’d cured my headache. Despite having locked us in my store earlier and disabling my phones, he seemed a stand-up sort of guy. Maybe he wasn’t warm and fuzzy, but…I trusted him. And that’s saying a lot given the fact he arrested me.

I initially thought this seemed like a charming idea for a cozy mystery series, but I wasn't prepared for the extent of its charms. I devoured this in one sitting and if I owned it, I'd have likely rolled right into the sequel (I will be rectifying this situation soon). I want to use words like cute and adorable, but those both feel condescending, so I'm sticking with charming for now. Enchanting might work there, too. But that's a little too something given all the witchiness of the book.

Lawley's not afraid to have a little fun with the premise—the first (aware) witch we meet is named Sabrina, for crying out loud.

*Pun intended, naturally.

The characters are all great (I thought about spending some time talking about them, but why ruin your fun?). The candies are tantalizing—even for someone who abstains from sugar. The coffee shop owned by the detective (there's not enough supernatural crime to be a full-time job in this area—and he needs a cover story for the non-magical folks) will cause cravings for sure.

Basically, this is a light-hearted, sweet, appealing, and charming book. I encourage you to grab a snack, pick up Cutthroat Cupcakes, and get lost in the world for a little while. You'll feel better for it.… (meer)