Review: A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic by J. Penner
This book was a let down.
I was so enchanted by the premise. But then.
Sigh. Let's get into it.
SUMMARY:
Arleta Starstone is a baker living in the small village of Adenashire. She makes her meager living by selling her baked goods at the local market. She has two other names: Negative Nancy and Debbie Downer. Anyway, one day her Gay Orc Dad(love him) enters her into a baking competition in Elf Country aka Langheim - without her knowledge. She is accepted!...What a travesty. This is the worst thing that ever happened to her, apparently.
Goodness.
Informing her of her acceptance is Theo. Theo is an elf who for some reason is just immediately in love with Arleta, and she him. Like, right off the bat. After some complaining and escape attempts from Arleta, Theo manages to get her to go to the Baking Battle. We meet more fun side characters, we do surprisingly little baking to be honest, we get a happily ever after the end.
MY THOUGHTS:
Yo what are these characters. They have little to no personality or depth. Every single thing about them/the world is told directly to us. Not an ounce of subtext in this book.
For example: The main conflict of this book is that Arleta is a human with no magic, and is therefore horribly discriminated against. At least, that is what Arleta tells us. Literally not even once does anyone else seem to care. Like, the market owner is supposed to be super racist against humans. But like he seems to only be upset with her because she is consistently TWO HOURS late to set up her booth. Daily. Like, yeah, I would be mad too.
Theo and Arleta have zero chemistry. Which makes sense, because Theo has the personality of a Live Laugh Love sign. Kind, basic, boring. Also for a romance novel I felt like he was hardly in the book??? Maybe just because he doesn't do a lot when he is there. IDK.
Make Taenya the love interest she and Arleta had way more chemistry lol.
We stan the side characters, who were at least fun. Still entirely one-dimensional, but like at least they had some charm.
THE GOSH DANG ROSEMARY.
Honestly at times this book kinda read like a children's book. The writing was bland and simple. Very little worldbuilding, which was disappointing to me as I was rather interested in the setting. Like, this felt like a YA novel that was more on the 12-14 side than the 17-21 side, ya know?
The sentence structure was weird and confusing at times. It felt choppy and disjointed; sometimes it was hard to know who was talking/thinking about what. The pacing was strange. Despite there being a clear endpoint in the finale of the Baking Battle, it never really felt like we were making progress. Then that endpoint is not the endpoint, because we still have 15% left in the book.
Let this book end omg why is this a slow burn what even is the conflict keeping them apart GOD.
FINAL OPINION:
This made me sad, man. I was so hyped. A fantasy baking competition??? Love, obsessed. But in the end the Baking Battle was somehow hardly used. Each challenge lasted 1-2 pages, and then it was back to the boring romance and contrived conflict. I am so interested in the setting that I am tempted to check out the other books in the series, but I don't think I will after slogging through this book. Who knows.
Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing me an advanced copy of the deluxe edition of this book.
I was so enchanted by the premise. But then.
Sigh. Let's get into it.
SUMMARY:
Arleta Starstone is a baker living in the small village of Adenashire. She makes her meager living by selling her baked goods at the local market. She has two other names: Negative Nancy and Debbie Downer. Anyway, one day her Gay Orc Dad(love him) enters her into a baking competition in Elf Country aka Langheim - without her knowledge. She is accepted!...What a travesty. This is the worst thing that ever happened to her, apparently.
Goodness.
Informing her of her acceptance is Theo. Theo is an elf who for some reason is just immediately in love with Arleta, and she him. Like, right off the bat. After some complaining and escape attempts from Arleta, Theo manages to get her to go to the Baking Battle. We meet more fun side characters, we do surprisingly little baking to be honest, we get a happily ever after the end.
MY THOUGHTS:
Yo what are these characters. They have little to no personality or depth. Every single thing about them/the world is told directly to us. Not an ounce of subtext in this book.
For example: The main conflict of this book is that Arleta is a human with no magic, and is therefore horribly discriminated against. At least, that is what Arleta tells us. Literally not even once does anyone else seem to care. Like, the market owner is supposed to be super racist against humans. But like he seems to only be upset with her because she is consistently TWO HOURS late to set up her booth. Daily. Like, yeah, I would be mad too.
Theo and Arleta have zero chemistry. Which makes sense, because Theo has the personality of a Live Laugh Love sign. Kind, basic, boring. Also for a romance novel I felt like he was hardly in the book??? Maybe just because he doesn't do a lot when he is there. IDK.
Make Taenya the love interest she and Arleta had way more chemistry lol.
We stan the side characters, who were at least fun. Still entirely one-dimensional, but like at least they had some charm.
THE GOSH DANG ROSEMARY.
Honestly at times this book kinda read like a children's book. The writing was bland and simple. Very little worldbuilding, which was disappointing to me as I was rather interested in the setting. Like, this felt like a YA novel that was more on the 12-14 side than the 17-21 side, ya know?
The sentence structure was weird and confusing at times. It felt choppy and disjointed; sometimes it was hard to know who was talking/thinking about what. The pacing was strange. Despite there being a clear endpoint in the finale of the Baking Battle, it never really felt like we were making progress. Then that endpoint is not the endpoint, because we still have 15% left in the book.
Let this book end omg why is this a slow burn what even is the conflict keeping them apart GOD.
FINAL OPINION:
This made me sad, man. I was so hyped. A fantasy baking competition??? Love, obsessed. But in the end the Baking Battle was somehow hardly used. Each challenge lasted 1-2 pages, and then it was back to the boring romance and contrived conflict. I am so interested in the setting that I am tempted to check out the other books in the series, but I don't think I will after slogging through this book. Who knows.
Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing me an advanced copy of the deluxe edition of this book.
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