Maire is outside one day when she encounters Fyel, a translucent man all dressed in white, who also has wings of some sort. Holmberg then begins to deftly weave in a few plot twists, the first of which being Fyel. I found myself immediately in her corner, cheering her on, as the real action of the story began. Right away I found Maire to be an endearing protagonist, both because of her magic, which she seems to use only to help people, and because the memory loss gives her a human and vulnerable quality. Although Maire is somewhat curious about who she is and where she came from, overall she is content with the life she is living and so doesn’t dwell on her true identity too much. What makes Maire even more interesting is that she has lost her memory – she has no idea who she is, where she came from, and no memories at all prior to the moment that a woman named Arrice found her in the forest a few years earlier and brought her to her own home to live. Those qualities are then passed on to those who eat the baked goods.
Maire is working as a baker and, curiously enough, has the ability to infuse her baked goods with qualities such as hope, strength, generosity, love – basically whatever qualities she chooses. When the story opens, Holmberg grabs the reader’s attention immediately as she begins to describe Maire. Maire is a young woman who learns this lesson the hard way. While I did find the read to be whimsical, instead of the light and fluffy, however, I found myself immersed in a tale full of weighty themes and relevant life lessons, the dominant one being that you have to take responsibility for choices that you make because actions have consequences. I think maybe that pretty cover fooled me into thinking I was heading into a light, fluffy, and whimsical read.
Holmberg’s Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet was a much darker story than I was expecting. The more often they meet, the more her memories return, and she begins to piece together who and what she really is-as well as past mistakes that yield cosmic consequences.įrom the author of The Paper Magician series comes a haunting and otherworldly tale of folly and consequence, forgiveness and redemption.Ĭharlie N. When marauders raid her town, Maire is captured and sold to the eccentric Allemas, who enslaves her and demands that she produce sinister confections, including a witch’s gingerbread cottage, a living cookie boy, and size-altering cakes.ĭuring her captivity, Maire is visited by Fyel, a ghostly being who is reluctant to reveal his connection to her. She doesn’t know why she can do this and remembers nothing of who she is or where she came from. Maire is a baker with an extraordinary gift: she can infuse her treats with emotions and abilities, which are then passed on to those who eat them. HolmbergįTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.
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