By Nico
Wren has always dreamed of joining the Coven, where every witch and magical source train together to protect the land. But despite her magical gifts, that’s never been an option; her brother died years ago from a witch’s spell gone wrong, and her ailing father can’t handle the truth about what she is. So she cares for him as he gets sicker and hides her magic instead. Surely, it’s a small price to pay for keeping him alive.
But Wren’s life is shattered when her father falls victim to a deadly magical plague. Desperate, she seeks out the only person who might be able to help her: Tamsin, the village witch.
Tamsin used to be the Coven’s most powerful witch. Now, though, what remains of her life after breaking the Coven’s most sacred rule has been consumed by their punishing curse: she can no longer experience love or joy unless she steals it from those around her. She has no good reason to work with dreamy, inexperienced Wren, or meddle again in the kind of magic that left her cursed in the first place. But she agrees to help Wren hunt down the witch responsible for the plague anyway, and as they search for the culprit—a search that brings them dangerously close to Tamsin’s own past—she begins to feel something for Wren that she was certain was impossible: love.
I went into this story all but certain that it wouldn’t surprise me. The heartless witch, the idealistic newbie, a shared quest that becomes a burgeoning romance—although I was looking forward to digging into Sweet and Bitter Magic, since it came highly recommended, I didn’t truly expect it to be anything I hadn’t read before. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Yes, all these tropes are present in the story, but they take an almost unrecognizable form beneath Tooley’s deft pen, weaving two characters I couldn’t help but fall in love with even as they fell in love with each other. Wren’s conflict is infinitely relatable; the conflict she feels between what she wants and what she feels is right, and the guilt she feels when pursuing her own dreams, made her instantly leap off the page. Tamsin, too, felt completely real. Where many characters like her are just canonically impartial and heartless, the fact that she quite literally cannot feel love—and her longing to—made her far more complex than others like her, and that combined with her spectacular backstory gave her character incredible depth. Tooley’s writing was absorbing from the very first page, and I didn’t want to leave behind the fascinating world and spectacular cast when the book came to a close. I highly recommend Sweet and Bitter Magic to fans of queer romance, superb characters, and engrossing storylines ages twelve and up.
Wren has always dreamed of joining the Coven, where every witch and magical source train together to protect the land. But despite her magical gifts, that’s never been an option; her brother died years ago from a witch’s spell gone wrong, and her ailing father can’t handle the truth about what she is. So she cares for him as he gets sicker and hides her magic instead. Surely, it’s a small price to pay for keeping him alive.
But Wren’s life is shattered when her father falls victim to a deadly magical plague. Desperate, she seeks out the only person who might be able to help her: Tamsin, the village witch.
Tamsin used to be the Coven’s most powerful witch. Now, though, what remains of her life after breaking the Coven’s most sacred rule has been consumed by their punishing curse: she can no longer experience love or joy unless she steals it from those around her. She has no good reason to work with dreamy, inexperienced Wren, or meddle again in the kind of magic that left her cursed in the first place. But she agrees to help Wren hunt down the witch responsible for the plague anyway, and as they search for the culprit—a search that brings them dangerously close to Tamsin’s own past—she begins to feel something for Wren that she was certain was impossible: love.
I went into this story all but certain that it wouldn’t surprise me. The heartless witch, the idealistic newbie, a shared quest that becomes a burgeoning romance—although I was looking forward to digging into Sweet and Bitter Magic, since it came highly recommended, I didn’t truly expect it to be anything I hadn’t read before. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Yes, all these tropes are present in the story, but they take an almost unrecognizable form beneath Tooley’s deft pen, weaving two characters I couldn’t help but fall in love with even as they fell in love with each other. Wren’s conflict is infinitely relatable; the conflict she feels between what she wants and what she feels is right, and the guilt she feels when pursuing her own dreams, made her instantly leap off the page. Tamsin, too, felt completely real. Where many characters like her are just canonically impartial and heartless, the fact that she quite literally cannot feel love—and her longing to—made her far more complex than others like her, and that combined with her spectacular backstory gave her character incredible depth. Tooley’s writing was absorbing from the very first page, and I didn’t want to leave behind the fascinating world and spectacular cast when the book came to a close. I highly recommend Sweet and Bitter Magic to fans of queer romance, superb characters, and engrossing storylines ages twelve and up.
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