Reviews

Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic by Meghan Ciana Doidge

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distortthecode's review

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

lyakimov's review against another edition

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2.0

eesh25's review against another edition

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3.0

This book follows our protagonist Jade. Jade is dowser--someone who can sense magic--and also half-witch and half-human; or at least, that's what she though. When a Vampire comes into town and suspects her of murder, he tells her that while she is half-witch, the other half is something a lot more powerful. When it's found that she didn't kill anyone, the Vampire and the Werewolves assign her with the duty to find out who did.

It seems like such a cool plot, right? Finding the killer and all that? Except, the identity of the killer was glaringly obvious from the beginning (to me anyway) and the rest of the novel was spent waiting for the characters to catch up because the author would let anyone, even Kett (who was smarter than all the other characters combined) figure out who the culprit was.

Okay, this wasn't a bad book. Other than the suspense not being suspenseful and my issues with Jade (I'll get to that later), things were pretty okay. The story had more focus on the lore and the plot, and the author wasn't trying to shove a romance into it. It should have been an interesting read but it simply wasn't.

There was no allure to the novel, nothing about it that left you itching to find out what would happen next. I didn't really care about the story or the characters, and even the writing, which was fine, felt dull. The 232 pages felt more like 400.

Getting to Jade. She was boring. She had the whole little-miss-innocent thing going on and she was quite dim in the brain department. But what bothered me the most about her was that she was so intentionally ignorant, and if anyone tried to cure her of her oblivion, she snapped at them. And she whined a lot about how her life was so good until all the big bad vamps and dogs came and ruined it, even after she found out that she was pretty involved in the situation without any outer interference.

Overall, this was an okay book with an okay plot and one interesting character (Kett); all of which is not enough to make me want to read the next book of the series, much less the next five. It could have been better had there been more energy, or intrigue, in the novel; but for now, it was nothing special.

yodamom's review against another edition

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3.0

Vampires, Werewolves, shifters, necromancers and witches oh my. It was a cute cozy type para-mystery read with a few grizzly bits, a good introduction into this world of baked goodies and supernaturals.

babbler1202's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

ingread27's review against another edition

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4.0

It's really fun reading books by a local author where the action is set in Vancouver, and there's lot of chocolate. Yum! OK, imaginary chocolate, but still yum! I enjoyed stepping into Jade's life as she met up with various otherworldly characters. I look forward to the rest of the series!