ARC Review: Magic For Liars – Where Good Ingredients Don’t Make a Good Dish.

Hello world! How are you? And how are your reading going? I am back from my vacation and I just want to go back. But they tell me this is not a thing, so I’ll try to comfort myself with blogging… and maybe I can try to catch up with my overdue ARCs’ reviews!

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley and to the editor. 

Title: Magic For Liars
Author: Sarah Gailey
Page count: 336
Pubblication Date: June 4th, 2019

Ivy Gamble has never wanted to be magic. She is perfectly happy with her life—she has an almost-sustainable career as a private investigator, and an empty apartment, and a slight drinking problem. It’s a great life and she doesn’t wish she was like her estranged sister, the magically gifted professor Tabitha.
But when Ivy is hired to investigate the gruesome murder of a faculty member at Tabitha’s private academy, the stalwart detective starts to lose herself in the case, the life she could have had, and the answer to the mystery that seems just out of her reach. 

 

The blurb compares this book to The Magician by L. Grossman, and I found it quite accurate, especially if we speak about the general atmosphere. And that should be good, right? Erm… not as much. I mean, it could be great, but I am not a fan of that book, and my main problem with that book was atmosphere’s related so… do we all see a problem here, right?
So yeah… the general atmosphere wasn’t of my liking. But I had other problems with this book too.  In case you missed it, the plot say “Ivy Gamble has never wanted to be magic. She is perfectly happy with her life—she has an almost-sustainable career as a private investigator, and an empty apartment, and a slight drinking problem. It’s a great life and she doesn’t wish she was like her estranged sister, the magically gifted professor Tabitha.” And yes, is ironic. Because our MC, the poor Ivy is so full of resentmen, of envy. She is so hungry for a life that isn’t for her. And her hunger is real. You can feel it while dooze off from the pages. And I mean, is not that she is not entitled to it, from life she got the shorter stick and that’s not right. But in some point in your life you just have to let it go or your entire life would be a sad one. And she choose the sad one.
And in this the author is great, because she did an amazing job depicting this aspect of her character. It’s really hard to live like Ivy, because the hunger and the resentment are so much, but the author portraied it really well. But this is just not my cup of tea, sorry.

What I wrote in the precedent paragraph is about my personal taste. But I had some more problems with this book, and I think that they are more “its fault than mine”.
Ivy is a P.I. and I was really pleased by it. But really, she’s the worst! We didn’t see a lot of investigation going around, just Ivy doing a lot of bad choices after bad choices. Mostly stupid ones. And, in the end, is not her who resolve the case. It’s sort of resolve by itself while a lot of things happens. And I am not happy with her final choice, either. Not just because it’s not making so much sense to me, but because… come on!!!!!!
And then we have the setting. At the beginning was quite cool, we are in a magic school so what could possibly go wrong?? Eh… I have tried to answer that question, and, to be honest, I don’t  have an answer but I know that something happens and we just… lost something. I don’t know how to explain it, but in the beginning we have a lot of possibilities but in the end it’s like any other school. We have also a Chosen One Prophecy going on in there, so I was amazed at the beginning. But in the end it wasn’t so well integrated in the story, it’s just a surplus, something put in there just because it would have been cool, but with no real importance. The story would have worked perfectly even without it. Really.

I was expecting a pleasant reading, but I didn’t enjoyed myself a lot. To be honest this is not an awful book, but it could have been more. Come on: magic school, P.I. and a Chosen One Prophecy and that’s the best you can get? Sorry, but nope. And I gave it a 3 rating because it’s not completely bad, but it’s more a 2.75.

What about you? Have you liked it? Or have you read some other books from the same author? Let me know!

Happy reading!
S.