A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic by J. Penner

TL;DR: Good bones with a terrible main character.
Source: NetGalley, thank you to the publisher!

Plot: Arleta wins entry into a famous baking competition but she’s magicless and scared.
Characters: I’m going to be honest, Arleta ruined this for me.
Setting: I actually really liked the setting on this one!
Fantasy: A very light fantasy touch and I enjoyed that.

Thoughts:

A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic has been on my radar since it was self-published some time ago. So when I finally got a chance to read the new deluxe edition I jumped at it. Unfortunately this one just didn’t work for me at all.

Arleta bakes for a living and sells her goods in the local market to make ends meet and ends up through the meddling of her neighbors entered into a famous baking competition (think Chopped). The story is short, her quick journey there and the seemingly even quicker competition. Through it we listen to her cry, repeatedly about being magicless. She has no magic in a world of magic beings and wizards and for her that is the end of the world. This girl has no identity besides ‘magicless’ and sadly I think it’s a self inflicted identity.

Perhaps this is meant to be a flaw of the world but we saw almost nothing to indicate that anyone besides herself and the grouchy man at the market cared. We also had a romantic lead who was about as interesting as a piece of white paper. This one didn’t work for me, it was a lot of crying from a character who had little else going for her. The bones here were good, I liked everything around Arleta but I was so happy to close the book on her. Thank goodness.