Magic For Liars and Other May Reads

I finished nine books in May:

The Farm by Joanne Ramos (ARC)
The Make or Break Year by Emily Krone Phillips
The Serpent’s Shadow by Rick Riordan
Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly (audiobook)
Sleeping Beauties by Stephen and Owen King
The Unbound by Victoria Schwab
Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey (ARC)
Donna Has Left the Building by Susan Jane Gilman (ARC)
Why Didn’t I Learn This in College? by Paula Rutherford

Of the three ARCs I read this month, Magic For Liars was my favorite. My full review is below. Reviews for the other ARCs can be found here (The Farm) and here (Donna Has Left the Building).

I received an Advance Reader’s Copy of Magic For Liars by Sarah Gailey from the publisher (Tor) in exchange for an honest review. Magic For Liars is scheduled for release on June 4, 2019.

Magic For Liars is a private detective novel. It is also a novel of magic. Ivy is a private detective hired to investigate a death at a private high school. This high school is unlike most that we are familiar with. This school teaches magic.

Ivy was born unlucky. She has no magic, but has spent her entire life imagining how things would be different if she did. Ivy’s twin sister, Tabitha, was born lucky. She has magic, and is currently working at the school where the murder took place.

Ivy takes the job, seeing it as not only a big paycheck, but a chance to experience the life she was denied, and perhaps a chance to reconnect with the sister she deliberately grew away from. The job turns out to be more complicated than Ivy imagined, with the truth she seeks hidden by the secrets of students, teachers, and Ivy herself.

This story is told from Ivy’s point of view, and we get to know her quite well. I found her very believable as a non-mage interacting with a world of magic. She alternates between being jealous of magic and despising both the magic and the people who wield it. Frequently throughout the story, Ivy is disgusted by the way magic is wasted on trivial things when it could be used for important things like saving lives.

Other characters are more distant to us as readers. We only get to see them through Ivy’s lens and her interactions with them. Since they are presented to us through Ivy, we are limited in how well we get to know them, but they are still present as individuals. For the most part, these characters are clear, but there are a couple of sets of people (a group of high school girls, for example) that blurred together a bit for me.

I enjoyed the setting of this novel a ton. This is not Hogwarts. It is a modern day, American, boarding school that happens to teach magic in a world where Harry Potter exists. There are references to Hogwarts throughout, primarily with Ivy comparing what she is seeing in front of her to imaginary school. There are lots of details here that make the school come to life and make it a real place instead of a fictional castle.

Overall, the plot is well written. There are twists and turns through the story, as you would expect in a private detective novel. There was a good balance of shifts that I saw coming and surprises that I did not. There were, however, quite a few glitches in the story. These were minor inconsistencies in the timeline, and inconsistencies in characters and what they knew when. These were minor, but they were enough to catch my attention and pull me out of the story. Hopefully, these issues are resolved in the final published version of the novel.

Magic For Liars is an enjoyably fresh take on the private detective genre. If you like mysteries, fantasies, and stories that aren’t afraid to look at their tropes and poke gentle fun at them, you will most likely enjoy this novel.