Minimum Wage Magic

So here is the thing about Rachel Aaron. I feel like something is missing of most of her books. They are not bad or anything, but they are mostly not amazing quality and really put together. This was another example of that.

Opal basically does the storage auction version of flats in this futuristic and magical, lawless version of Detroit. She gets the place on an auction, cleans it out and the stuff in it is hers to sell. She used to be a rich girl of some sort, but in exchange for freedom she has a huge debt to pay too her dad, which means her recent horrible luck with finding juicy stuff is really bad news.
Then one day she finds a place with a dead body and she figures out the person was doing something dangerous. She needs to find out, as something that dangerous can potentially mean big money.

One thing I have to warn you about. The story of the book ends at around 85% of the book and the rest is basically just sample chapters of other stuff from the author. I mean I can't blame her for the hustle, really, but at the same time this is already a very short little book. Depending on the price you pay for it, it is something you should consider and also the reading experience can be different depending on if you know the book is going to end soon or not.
I personally don't like sample chapters neither from the next book in the series nor something completely different. Just in general I hate reading parts of a book I don't have access to right now in full form, because either I'm wasting time or I will like it and want to read it, in which case I'm shit out of luck. I'm probably not the only person with limited access to whatever I need right away. So there is that. So from my point of view this feature of the book sucked.

The thing is, Opal never becomes too interesting. She is fine, nothing offensively wrong with her, but like with the book, she is kind of just there. A tiny bit of “she believes she is ugly, but guys just love her because she is pretty after all” is present which is the overused trope of almost any kind of YA type book. She was made to believe she is ugly for a reason, but still.
Of course she needs a love interest, who is a walking trope again, namely the rough guy who seems like a total dick but deep down is such a nice, down on his luck heart of gold man with some sort of a dark past. Nik, you so original.

The story itself is fine, it's fast paced and kind of fun. Is it polished or ingenious? No. Did I get very excited about it? Nah. I'm not sure how much more it will become. Of course we will hear more about Nik's past and also the overarching story with Opal and her family for sure, but at the same time I'm nowhere near invested enough to care all that much.
It plays out in the same world as a previous series about dragons but that one seemed to be much richer and there were many more characters, so while the protagonists had their limitations we had many others with their motivations and scheming to make things a bit more interesting and push even the goody-two-shoes mains to do something interesting. This book would benefit from Amelia or Bob from those books fucking shit up for everyone. Just saying.

Overall just not a horribly exciting book. Serviceable, something quick you can read while you don't have much time or you are distracted by other things (hello, vacation time reading), but not something that got me too too excited.

Have a nice day and do more than the bare minimum!