A review by aretz
Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet by Charlie N. Holmberg

3.0

Solid 3 stars. This novel isn't as good as her Paper Magician series. The ending for this novel didn't seem very logical and the epilogue was disappointing. I guess I wanted this to be more connected with the idea of fairy tale or creator as if Maire had flung herself into a book, but her actions ultimately didn't really seem to connect with what was happening in the novel. What actually happened was just...not that interesting...I almost felt that the author's dogma and her own wants got in the way of her story. And I hate to say that because I really enjoy Holmberg's writing style and her ability to tell a story, but this...this just fell flat. Perhaps this was just too ambitious of a story to only be fit into less than 300 pages. The romance elements were a little lax, the world outside where she's been dropped off wasn't quite built up, and the plot just didn't seem to fit in with the final mystery that took a really long time to get to.

All in all, I highly recommend The Paper Magician as a first read from Holmberg--Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet might be more of a turn off than an encouragement to keep going with the author's novels.