Information
Finished reading date: January 7th, 2023
My rating (out of 5): ⭐️ ⭐️
Genre(s): Fantasy, romance
Summary
Finlay Ashowan is a house witch—or a hearth witch, if you so prefer—and seeks to have the fact remain hidden. This is all the more difficult when you are the cook of the King of the continent, and the entire castle seems fixated on figuring out secrets and barging into your kitchen at inappropriate times.
Finlay’s (or Fin) gruff, highly opinionated, and brutally honest character makes him both aggravating and mysterious to both the high and low society of Daxaria. And yet, with the coarse layers peeled back, Fin is desperate to create a warm environment where all who come to his kitchen are equally safe and at peace and free to lay their burdens down. This, along with some other traits, ultimately charms the seemingly impenetrable beauty of the castle, a recent widow with secrets of her own, as well as the King, Queen, and the many inhabitants of the castle.
Yet, not all is at peace, as his own past trauma, a country on the verge of war, and political unrest at every turn seem to have every intention of unraveling his hope for calm, creating a far larger headache than he ever desired.
Analysis Rant
General stance: this was an odd one for me, but I didn’t hate it.
The book blurb reads like a YA classic, and that is what originally drew me to it. I’m not one to immediately turn my nose up at well-worn tropes, and I was curious about the idea of the “house witch” being male and how they were going to play that. Another thing that piqued my interest was how the reviews raved about it being a very warm and kinda cozy book, and I feel like that style of writing has been a bit more difficult to find nowadays in the world of action-dense material. Coming off of an emotionally difficult week, I was down for some cozy escapism, and the image they were painting was one of a warm cup of tea. And I’m down for that.
And… I was both given exactly that while also being very disappointed.
The story definitely has a lovely warmth to it, which I think is largely brought about by the author diving deep into the core building blocks of her main character, Fin, and allowing this to naturally set the tone for the entire book. For that is who Fin ultimately is: a genuinely warm, nurturing, and kind-hearted man. And I’m for that.
The writing had me very confused, though. It felt a bit like a teenager had written a fanfic, with each chapter being led less by planning with an overarching story in mind and character development, and more, by these serial-type filler episodes set in a particular setting. The setting was vibrant enough that it felt like the author spent a significant amount of time building the world, and then when sitting down to write the book, just allowed the characters to explore it. And while I don’t hate that style of writing, doing that for the entirety of 400+ pages left me feeling a bit bored, especially considering what the characters were finding was very predictable to a degree. The book just felt like a smirk to me, not committed to a full smile but neither committed to just a dull, consumeristic stare. There was definitely conflict set within the story, but it felt like it was just background noise a lot of the time. Randomly, it would rear its head and remind us that not everything was so comfy, but even still—especially within the last half—humor seemed to take precedence over development. Each chapter almost always fell in line with some kind of humorous or emotional upset, thus creating a feeling that something was happening, when really, it was often the same upset but with different characters or just slightly different.
One thing that I did enjoy because of this, though, is that we got the feeling that Fin and the Viscountess were actually getting to know each other within all these small, serial conflicts. You felt their attraction grow and you could see why they might like each other. It made sense. And the author didn’t just fling the two together into bed and “allow” that to be their initial attraction. The author had the characters question whether it was lust or whether it was something deeper that brought them together, and at the end of the day, it was constantly Fin who was setting the boundaries, which I found very refreshing. Likewise, I found Fin’s psychology based on his background to be pretty well considered, and the ways that people responded to it, I felt were reasonable. However, while not awful, the ending felt very “ALL BETTER NOW BECAUSE OF THE POWER OF LOVE!” It just felt like the author had written herself into a corner and had to have Fin make a choice, and there really was only one option given the way the story was written. It worked itself together very neatly and lovely, but way too neatly and lovely. Very predictable. But perhaps that lends itself to the warmth of the story. We know what will happen, and there is just enough “conflict” to make us feel like it’s not moving at a sloth’s pace.
Really, though, it reads like a slightly better-written adult romance novel. Thinking that this was going to be YA or for a younger age was probably the biggest surprise. To be sure, it’s rare to find a fantasy book with protagonists in their 20s and 30s, so I value that. The world needs more of that. For those of us who are wizened in our years but still love YA, those of us who love coming-of-age stories but have slightly more crusty and critical hearts, a 20-somethings novel seems like a gap that needs to be filled. “More steam” and slightly more defined identities but still room for more growth than a YA seems to be something the book was going for, but they still kept it PG-13 (mostly). However, the humor was grade school level a lot of the time, which I don’t hate when done well, and it did drag a smirk out of me a couple of times, but I didn’t love it. It was inappropriate a lot of the time, and while the book seemed to really attempt to be respectful to minority groups, and therefore, it didn’t branch off into that kind of crassness, there was still a lot to be asked for.
Likewise, while I did feel like they were trying to incorporate more exposure of LGBT and normalization without much morality speech around it, I do feel like it got out of hand sometimes and was weaponized. In an attempt to protect the women from doing the dirty work of seduction, instead, the author had the gay character do it. While it was done in a way that I think was the best (or well, kindest) possible option for the scene, I don’t love that it had to arrive at that in the first place. It just seemed like the easy option and lacked creativity.
Also, the weird two chapters that switched POV to Fin’s cat familiar, Kraken, felt extremely odd, abrupt, and inconsistent. Nowhere else does this happen for any other character, and I still don’t understand the purpose of it. If that was something the author wanted to do, then that’s fine, I love a good change of POV, but I would have liked it to be done more frequently so that I can see the intention of it, or have it separated from the regular chapter in some way.
My biggest complaint, I think, is that it just didn’t feel edited enough. As I mentioned before, it just felt like a fanfic. And that’s not ragging on fan fiction. I just want things to be called what they are. The book was too long; the characters weren’t developed enough. Each chapter read like a mini-episode, and an overall conflict—while in the background—just wasn’t strong and only barely moved the characters forward. The romance was really the main driving force of the story, and that is what ultimately makes it a romance novel first, with some fantastical elements involved. It just felt all very gratuitous without much of the brutal editing that makes a book tighter and more consistent. There was just too much redundancy, which likely was just because the book needed to be shorter and the “small” conflicts were becoming in short demand, while the “larger” conflicts couldn’t be used or else it would throw off the story. It felt very much like a one-author show without much support.
This being said, there are obviously people who want this kind of fanfic writing with just slightly more depth and length to it. I can give it huge points for its warmth and escapism, and I understand why people might just like it for that rather than wanting something of substance. This book tastes like white bread—all simple carbs that fill you up but without a lot of substance. I don’t think I highlighted even one line because there really just wasn’t anything that caught my eye or inspired thought. Each sentence blended together with the next. And while, as I said, there were some things that I appreciated about the different track chosen, the way about it wasn’t my preference.
I do plan on reading the second book to see if this changes at all or how it might add to the story. And perhaps more than anything, I do really appreciate Fin as a character, and I’m curious how the author will grow him.
Writer’s Takeaway
- “Bad” books create opportunities for your own future writing.
- Don’t be afraid of editing. Lean into it. We don’t live in the classical world anymore.
Book Recommendations
Other lighthearted fantasy books done VERY well:
- The Color of Magic by Terry Prachett
- Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones
- Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede