Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai

Source: NetGalley – Thank you to the publisher!
TL;DR: A little overwritten and much more focused on the romance than the central plot. But I did like it!

Plot: Focused in on the romance more than anything but it was interesting enough to keep me through with a few very attention grabbing points
Characters: There was a good diversity of characters, though we might have been following the dullest of the batch!
Setting: There wasn’t a huge emphasis on setting, though I loved the scenes in the corporation/travel hubs
Magic: It’s a bit soft, I really wish we’d seen more of it because it had so much potential, perhaps in a later book we could see that

Thoughts:

I may have gone into this with the wrong expectations but this was far more Romance, and Open Door Romance at that, than I thought it was going to be! The focus of Bitter Medicine is around Luc and Elle, who meet at work. Elle is an incredibly talented magic user making low level glyphs and potions for agents while Luc is the right hand of the leader of their company. He uses her glyphs and goods, and she works a shop front. They’ve developed a friendship that gradually turns into more while the world catches up to them.

From the start the story is intriguing, though I wouldn’t label it as gripping. I loved the setting (think a Men in Black style world and organization except it’s more Fae creatures and the like than aliens) and I liked Elle and Luc. Elle is burdened with guilt trying to make up for something in her past and hiding in plain sight to do so. Luc is very sweet, and very kind but very much at the mercy of a real piece of work boss.

The struggles they faced never felt too insurmountable and the two always communicated fairly well, especially when I gauge this more on a Romance scale than a Fantasy one (which is where this should lay in my opinion). Unfortunately because of this the story didn’t have the staying power or the unputdownable aspect I’d look for. I was 90% into this and almost forgot I was reading it, though I was interested in what happened, I just… forgot?

Overall I did enjoy this! It was just a quiet and unassuming type of story. The use of languages does stand out as something I loved, and the multicultural aspect. I just wish it had gone full cozy or more intense to keep your interest.

3 Flying Glyphs out of 5