Homegrown Magic is a queer cozy romance sprinkled with magic.
The story started off pretty slow and seemed to drone on and on in the beginning. Two chapters in and I was so bored, I didn't think I'd be able to finish, especially since the authors did way too much "telling" instead of "showing". i.e. her dress was red, his hair was blonde, etc. (Those aren't exact quotes from the book, just examples of what I mean by telling instead of showing.) I think that contributed a lot to the tediousness I was feeling. As the story picked up speed however, I didn't notice this as much. When I looked for it, it was still there in some places, but not as much.
Things started to get more interesting once Yael and Margot met up, even though their budding romance moved along at a snails pace. But at least we got to see inside their heads, and see how they were each feeling towards each other. Sometimes their inner dialogue was still a bit tedious in places however. I also really wish Margot opened up sooner rather than thinking everything was on her to solve. It's a character trait I don't really admire so it didn't endear her to me as much as Yael's issues with their family did.
And don't be throwing me shade for this next comment because it's not meant in a discriminatory way at all. It's probably just a a problem of mine, but I've not yet gotten used to reading an entire book with one of the MCs using a "they" pronoun. Many times when "they" was used, I kept thinking the author was referring to both MCs instead of just the one (this wasn't the first book to affect me this way). This is probably an issue that only impacts me as a Gen X'er who learned to read and write when "they" was mainly used for plural and he or she for singular in order to avoid this kind of ambiguity. (Yes, I know "they" can also be used singular, but it never really was back then due to the obscurity it can generate, so I've obviously still got some outdated traditions to break and that's on me. Maybe they they were on to something with the Spivak pronouns e/em/eir, or maybe we need to invent a new word that's a plural version of they.)
Overall though, once it got going, I found the story amusing and engaging, and would recommend it to fans of cozy romance with a slow burn and a seasoning of magic.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this pre-release book. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own.
View at Bookshop.org
View at Amazon
View at Goodreads
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment