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[katara]

Title: A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking

Author: T. Kingfisher

Genre: Children, Middle School, Fantasy, Magic Realism, Young Adult, Humor, Fiction, Paranormal, Science Fiction, Cozy, Witches

Date Started: January 10th, 2023

Date Finished: January 11th, 2023

Status: Finished

Rating: 4/5

Sypnosis: 2021 LODESTAR AWARD for BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK

Fourteen-year-old Mona isn’t like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can’t control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt’s bakery making gingerbread men dance.

But Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries…

Review: Okay, is there a Bob fanclub?

We need a Bob fanclub. If there is one, I want to join!

Also, there should be a Gingerbread Man fanclub too!

Unlike the other wizards in the city, Mona's speciality is bread-making. Sometimes she can make gingerbread men come to life or grab some sourdough from her creation in the basement named Bob. But something happens when Mona finds a dead body in the bakery. She even becomes the prime suspect in the death. What is even worse, flyers start appearing with her name and picture calling her a traitor. Now Mona has to find a way to clear her name and stay ahead of the Spring Green Man and whoever he is working for. Can Mona find a way to stop the wizards and magic users from disappearing?

This was a really fun read. Honestly, I felt sorry for Mona from time to time. Here she is with the magic to make bread come alive and yet, she is being hunted because of this ability. Even worse, there are people out there who are dislike magic users and many of them even become pleased when it comes to rounding them up and forcing them to be rounded up and registered. Sounds like Nazi Germany, right?

I loved Mona because no matter how down she became when she knew her magic was only for baking, she did push herself on to find the Duchess and get rid of the Spring Green Man and whoever was part of controlling him.

This book is fun and you will be rooting for the characters more than anything. You will have moments of giggles and you will have moments where you will be on the edge of your seat hoping Mona finds a way to save her friends. I loved, loved this book. I am really happy to have it when I was skimming through BookTok. This book did not disappoint me at all and you will fall in love with the characters.

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[katara]

Title: Big Bad

Author: Lily Anderson

Genre: Media-Tie In, Buffy the Vampire, Retellings, Paranormal, Fantasy, Young Adult, Horror, Vampires, Magical Realism, Urban Fantasy, Adventure, Action, Contemporary, Dark, Fiction

Date Started: January 11th, 2023

Date Finished: January 11th, 2023

Status: Finished

Rating: 4/5

Sypnosis: Demondale, Callifornia, 1999...Like Sunnydale, but whole lot more evil.

Step into this alternate reality, where chaos reigns supreme. The Mayor’s sun-shade has created permanent darkness over Sunnydale, fully opening the Hellmouth once and for all. Now the newly christened Demondale has become a safe haven for vampires, beasts, and all types of ruffians. It's never been better to be bad.

Aspiring supervillains (and super nerds) Jonathan and Andrew attempt to hold their own in a town full of monsters, while three-hundred-year-old vengeance demon Anya is just looking for something to give her life purpose again, spending her days working at an evil juice bar. But soon word gets out that there’s a new Big Bad on the scene, one more powerful and more destructive than anyone who has come before. She, of course, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And she’s hell-bent on rooting out all of this reality's evil by any means necessary.

Now Jonathan, Andrew, and Anya must recruit a team of Demondale’s most notorious villains—including Angelus, Spike, Drusilla, and even Ripper the malevolent magic shop owner—in order to save their world. But it’ll be no easy feat to put their pride and differences aside and stop the worst thing that has ever come to town: good.

Written by acclaimed author and Buffy super fan Lily Anderson, this novel brings together Buffy's most devious and beloved villains from the Trio to the Whirlwind to Anya, Glory, and Vampire Willow. This is one apocalypse Buffy fans are not going to want to miss!

Review: Imagine a world, if you will, where Buffy never came to Sunnydale. It is now a place where the Mayor has blocked out the sun and Sunnydale has now become Demonsdale. The original Big Bad - Angelus, Vampire Willow, Spike, Ripper, and Drusilla have made it their home and their own world.

Enter the original Buffy. She has arrived but this world is not her own. Rather, she was tossed here by a wish and now she has to find her way back to her original timeline.

But first, she has to battle the original Big Bad to retrieve magical items that will help her and along the way piss off the big bad in this timeline. The one thing I would have loved to have seen are other timelines to this one. I think even those would have been just as interesting as this one. I hope that we do get something like that in the future.

Will Buffy find her way home?

Okay, this has been the first Buffy book that I have loved. The loved the fact this one breaks off from season one and cuts into an alternate world. The characters we have come to love and hate in one big area and now have to prepare to fight a slayer. A slayer none of them had seen in quite some time. Many believe that the slayer nothing but a myth.

It was great to see the big bads of the original world being able to take control of their own world and live it. I was happy to see Angelus and Drusilla. The only thing I would have loved to see was Buffy's interaction with them. The moments are brief, too brief for me. I would have loved to see what they would have done to know that there is another world with them in totally different situations.

Buffy was still herself and I loved that. She came in, slayer blazing, and adding her own quips to the situation. I love her. I have always loved her and I was happy to see that her character did not change whatsoever and now she was going to be the Big Bad to the original ones. I found that hilarious how they had no idea how to deal with her.

This is really one of the few Buffy books that I actually enjoyed. The others branch off into original characters and although I love that idea, I still want to see more of Buffy herself.

The author really ties this one with the original season and that is what kept me reading. It was hard to put this book down and always found myself cheering on Buffy as she moved to return to her original timeline. I loved her interactions with the others even as brief as they were.

More Buffy in the future, please. :D