Magic for Liars

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for that, Bookish First!

This book was not at all what I had built up in my head. The back of the books says MURDER, MYSTERY, MADNESS, MAGIC. So in my head I had this wild ride of a book. And it really wasn't and I'm not mad at that at all, shockingly enough.

Ivy Gamble is a PI and she gets hired by a school to solve a murder. The problem is that she's never solved a murder (Her job is more cheating spouses and insurance scams). It's a high school for young mages. And it's where her estranged twin sister teaches.

What caught me off guard was how much in Ivy's head I would be. She lives in her head a lot and I can really relate to that. Her sister is magic and she is not and that, along with some family trauma, ripped them apart at a young age and they never really mended the rift. She sees herself as less than..almost all the time. When in reality she's not bad at her job.

Since Ivy and her sister Tabitha grew apart in their teens (with Tabitha going away to a magic high school), Ivy wanted to know nothing about magic. So she had no idea what to expect when she arrived at the school. And it wasn't at all what she expected and at times it seemed to make her angry. While there she also built up this double vision...The Now Ivy and the Could Have Been Ivy. The If I Had Magic Too Ivy. This Ivy Is Worth It Ivy. She really did sell herself short.

The author also did a great job with the rest of the characters. Ivy is the center of the story but that doesn't mean the other characters were lacking. Not at all.

This was a great debut. I am definitely going to keep a lookout for this author.

4.5! really liked this one. as much as i love high fantasy and the worldbuilding/exciting info that comes with that its a nice change of pace to have a urban fantasy as a nice easy read. i still got to satisfy my love for the fantasy elements with the interesting magic system, as well as my (poor broken) magic-school loving heart. i loved how they showed all the cute dumb magic teens would get up to at school (and how much ivy hated it). I think that having a non-magical protagonist was a good choice, it meant it was simple to ease me into the magic systems with good excuses to explain stuff.

i enjoyed the romantic relationships, casual lgbt rep and surprisingly i really liked ivy's character. i think the grumpy alcoholic detective is pretty over-done, but i think this subverts(?) it well. i really felt for her emotionally and i was invested in the murder mystery.

i liked the ending and the direction it went in...

i don't have many coherent thoughts about this book lol IT WAS GOOD!!!!!

This is a really hard review to write. I agonized for several minutes about what the star rating should be. So the good and then the bad!
The good:
I once again love Gailey's prose style. I am not an English major so don't ask me to quantify what makes it so awesome.
I always appreciate when it makes sense why characters didn't communicate fully. A physical separation combined with a trauma would definitely cause two people to see a situation super differently. Outside of a therapy setting the passage of time decreased the odds of a real honest conversation.
I loved the nurse character. She scares me in a good way.
The teenagers felt more like teenagers than a lot of other books I read. Not perfect, the mean girl trope was a bit much, but pretty good.
The parlor room scene was pretty great, though it did have one sort of weird gap.
The bad
- All of the teachers should have been informed that the investigator didn't have a magic background. I know she asked the woman who hired her not to share that info, but it would have been more realistic if that information had been already shared with the adults in the room. I'm willing to buy the kids not being informed.
- I know this book isn't a romance and that its just a minor subplot. That being said, the romance plot used one of my least favorite tropes in a really dumb way.
- Why is she the only one immune to the weird persuasive power?? It is never explained. I kept waiting to find out the main character was immune to magic she didn't consent to, as like a plot twist or something. But nope. Just randomly immune. For reasons. Argh.