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tympestbooks 's review for:
The Confectioner's Guild
by Claire Luana
Wren knew she was a good confectioner, better than an apprentice certainly, but she could not have known that her confections carried actual magic. Had no clue until the day she was dragged to the Confectioner’s Guildhall and presented to the Guildmaster. The day she was informed of her Gifted status, of the Guilds’ greatest secret. The day she was framed for a murder, the Guildmaster poisoned with her cupcake. Her bright new future seems at an immediate end until Inspector Lucas Imbris vouches for her, giving her a chance to help with his investigation, prove her innocence, and find the real killer. The clues add up to something far larger than even the murder of a Guildmaster and much further reaching. If Wren cannot find the real killer quickly more than her new life will be at risk.
Sometimes I come across a book that frustrates me on a couple of levels but is basically fine. Sometimes a book seems unsure of its target audience. Those seldom intersect in quite the way they do in Claire Luana’s The Confectioner’s Guild. There is a clash to the book that I find myself not entirely sure how to put words to.
I want to start with the good. The murder mystery is well thought out, paced fairly well, and the killer is well foreshadowed with motive baked in. The characters are, with exception to one scene and the romance, solidly written and largely enjoyable. I enjoyed seeing the interactions between Wren and various other members of the Confectioner’s Guild. There were nice little character details for the more major characters. Luana clearly put thought and consideration into at least the recent history of her setting and how some of its politics work and could affect the people of the setting. The Confectioners Guild has all the ingredients of a good book and lovely descriptions of the various foods besides. But then I look back and that all feels like faint praise.
The romance killed so much of the second half of the book for me. The male love interest, Lucas, felt like he was way way older than Wren with the descriptions of his salt and pepper hair and his job as an inspector. And while Wren is treated as an adult in setting, she is also sixteen and painfully out of her depth in the guild and as a murder suspect. Which leads into Lucas being the Inspector trying to prove Wren’s innocence and solve the murder. It just felt very unbalanced and vaguely creepy, I lost all respect for him as a character when they confessed their feelings for each other, all because of one specific detail on his side of things. The romance also felt like it could have been removed from the book without losing anything of substance. It was a big part of why the climax of the book had to happen the way it did, but a lot of it felt like Luana had figured out what she wanted the climax of the book to be and the built the romance back from there.
The feeling that something happened in service to the climax rather than in a way that worked naturally for the characters happened in a couple of places actually. I would rather not go into either of them explicitly, because spoilers, but both were fairly egregious. There was a moment where a newly introduced character informed Wren on one characters feelings for another, something the reader would not have been able to gather themselves. The second instance followed from that, with a character acting aggressively out of character and away from knowledge he should have had, all to ensure that Wren did not have the allies she would have thought to rely on for her lowest moment. It felt artificial and badly considered both times it happened.
And that is where I land with The Confectioner’s Guild. The book is basically fine, the story is interesting and the characters are largely well written. But the couple of problems I had with it were bad enough to make any of the good feel greatly deadened. The romance is largely unnecessary and off putting in a way that lead to me closing the book any time it came up, just a personal squick with the implied age gape and power dynamics. This one gets a three out of five from me. Luana’s writing shows promise in a lot of ways but, the ending leads almost directly into a sequel and, while I am curious about where the story will go from here, I do not think this one caught me well enough for me to keep going.
Review was previously posted at https://tympestbooks.wordpress.com/2021/11/24/the-confectioners-guild/
Sometimes I come across a book that frustrates me on a couple of levels but is basically fine. Sometimes a book seems unsure of its target audience. Those seldom intersect in quite the way they do in Claire Luana’s The Confectioner’s Guild. There is a clash to the book that I find myself not entirely sure how to put words to.
I want to start with the good. The murder mystery is well thought out, paced fairly well, and the killer is well foreshadowed with motive baked in. The characters are, with exception to one scene and the romance, solidly written and largely enjoyable. I enjoyed seeing the interactions between Wren and various other members of the Confectioner’s Guild. There were nice little character details for the more major characters. Luana clearly put thought and consideration into at least the recent history of her setting and how some of its politics work and could affect the people of the setting. The Confectioners Guild has all the ingredients of a good book and lovely descriptions of the various foods besides. But then I look back and that all feels like faint praise.
The romance killed so much of the second half of the book for me. The male love interest, Lucas, felt like he was way way older than Wren with the descriptions of his salt and pepper hair and his job as an inspector. And while Wren is treated as an adult in setting, she is also sixteen and painfully out of her depth in the guild and as a murder suspect. Which leads into Lucas being the Inspector trying to prove Wren’s innocence and solve the murder. It just felt very unbalanced and vaguely creepy, I lost all respect for him as a character when they confessed their feelings for each other, all because of one specific detail on his side of things. The romance also felt like it could have been removed from the book without losing anything of substance. It was a big part of why the climax of the book had to happen the way it did, but a lot of it felt like Luana had figured out what she wanted the climax of the book to be and the built the romance back from there.
The feeling that something happened in service to the climax rather than in a way that worked naturally for the characters happened in a couple of places actually. I would rather not go into either of them explicitly, because spoilers, but both were fairly egregious. There was a moment where a newly introduced character informed Wren on one characters feelings for another, something the reader would not have been able to gather themselves. The second instance followed from that, with a character acting aggressively out of character and away from knowledge he should have had, all to ensure that Wren did not have the allies she would have thought to rely on for her lowest moment. It felt artificial and badly considered both times it happened.
And that is where I land with The Confectioner’s Guild. The book is basically fine, the story is interesting and the characters are largely well written. But the couple of problems I had with it were bad enough to make any of the good feel greatly deadened. The romance is largely unnecessary and off putting in a way that lead to me closing the book any time it came up, just a personal squick with the implied age gape and power dynamics. This one gets a three out of five from me. Luana’s writing shows promise in a lot of ways but, the ending leads almost directly into a sequel and, while I am curious about where the story will go from here, I do not think this one caught me well enough for me to keep going.
Review was previously posted at https://tympestbooks.wordpress.com/2021/11/24/the-confectioners-guild/