Reviews with content warning for Abortion - Magic for Liars

This was the first dark academia book I’ve read where the protagonist is not a student, isn’t part of the academic community and has no special talents that would help them join it, so the book felt strange to me, and I found myself craving a sense of competence from the protagonist Ivy that she didn’t possess.

But that was the tone: Ivy’s inferiority complex and fear of being unmasked as an unqualified interloper. For this reason the book never really explains how the magic works because the narrator herself doesn’t know.

Ivy’s main strength was interviewing people, and the book was at its most nuanced in scenes where Ivy was deliberately seeking to set a tone and control a conversation.

I have to admit I was surprised that the book never took the easy way out of “what if it turns out that Ivy actually does have latent magical powers that were never trained?” But that would have been corny so I am pleased it never went there.

It had a strange, bitter vibe of an older person looking back at their life and their teenage self and wishing for a do-over that would never come, but also having the distance to recognise that the teen characters are kind of lost and that what a younger person would see as charisma is mainly bullying and bravado.

The plot twists were pretty easy to anticipate. The character of Dylan felt like a YA fantasy cliché and it was clear he was being established as a Chosen One stereotype because he absolutely was not a Chosen One.

This was an easy read and was not an outstanding, memorable story, but was not bad either. The stakes felt small and I would not be in a hurry to revisit this world and characters in a different book.

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chris_reads's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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jayley's review against another edition

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lighthearted tense

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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spidey's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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thewoodlandbookshelf's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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schnaucl's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

I really liked this book. Even though I guessed some of the twists, I thought it was cleverly written. I really liked the protagonist's voice, and her ability to imagine herself in different timelines felt very genuine.

I almost expected it to turn out that it was a kind of magic that she was doing, to so fully inhabit the alternate timeline characters.

The characters were interesting and as were the ways the high school was both magical and utterly ordinary. Ivy's resentment at the wasted magic was understandable, as was the student's "waste" of magic because they're just kids and it's common for them, not the extraordinary thing it is for Ivy.

It was a very well built world. I'd like to spend more time there.

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micahslibrary's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I highly recommend reading this book! It’s definitely a mystery that makes sense when you look back at everything that happened and you might solve it before the reveal but the mystery will definitely still matter to you. The characters were all really loveable even when they were kind of infuriating. It was a 5 star book for me right from the first chapter and was delightful and super investing to read. :)

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