A review by thissagreads
Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

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

1.0

1 star for the concept, but the narrator was boring, and the story line was moving very slow and then finally at the end (the last hour) things moved much more rapidly. Ivy was way too self-loathing and was mostly unbearable, but I pushed through to finish because I wanted to know who was the killer. 
It’s Ivy’s sister Tabitha, who killed her girlfriend on accident trying to magically rid her of cancer, and after completing the “illegal” magical act that took 3 days, which literally took a part Tabitha’s girlfriend’s entire body. Well Tabitha hadn’t take a break from the spell and on the third day, when she got rid of all the cancer, she accidentally fell asleep and that’s what killed her girlfriend, because she wasn’t put back together whole. And Tabitha thought she could do it, because she gave a student a magical abortion -unsupervised and untrained- and recklessly didn’t put the kid under anesthesia, so the kid finally freaked out enough and told Ivy, who finally realized it was her twin the whole time. Ivy found out the whole story, and promised Tabitha that she wouldn’t let anyone at the school know but told Tabitha she had to quit and basically their relationship would never be close even though she finally wanted it to be, after decades of them not getting along.
I was really hoping it’d be a cooler, adult version of Harry Potter, but it was just a slow read with little buildup. The frayed sibling rivalry/relationship was boring and predictable -one gets magic and the other doesn’t, so of COURSE there’s resentment- and I’m glad I’ll never have to read this book again. Truly disappointing.
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