Katie Chandler had always heard that New York is a weird and wonderful place, but this small-town Texas gal had no idea how weird until she moved there. Everywhere she goes, she sees something worth gawking at and Katie is afraid she's a little too normal to make a splash in the big city. Working for an ogre of a boss doesn't help.
Then, seemingly out of the blue, Katie gets a job offer from Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., a company that provides tricks of the trade to the magic community. For MSI, Katie's ordinariness is an asset.
Lacking any bit of magic, she can easily spot a fake spell, catch hidden clauses in competitor's contracts, and detect magically disguised intruders. Suddenly, average Katie is very special indeed.
She quickly learns that office politics are even more complicated when your new boss is a real ogre, and you have a crush on the sexy, shy, ultra powerful head of the R&D department, who is so busy fighting an evil competitor threatening to sell black magic on the street that he seems barely to notice Katie. Now it's up to Katie to pull off the impossible: save the world and--hopefully--live happily ever after. (Goodreads)
Okay, so opening mention: my agent asked me to read this as I started in on revisions on my WIP. So, while reading, I was being extra picky and trying to parse out a lot of what was going on at the writing level, and less at the general-reading level. Which may be a bit why I found the plot itself to be a bit lacking. Like, I wanted to see more happen. It seemed to take until the very last chapter for that to occur, and even then I found myself doing going "wait, all that build up for that?" LOL! Okay, that's me being uber critical. The best thing about this book was the way the setting and characters were described. I loved the writing and the creativity of the setting and world. It was hilarious and very well done. Katie, while a tad bit of a Mary Sue, was also engaging and had a quick mind and was well drawn. There were a few times when I wanted her to be more active in her predicament, but how she responded to the world around her fit well with how she'd been put together. Anyhow, overall, I am curious to check out the rest of the series, but have a long list of other reads to check out ahead of that, as well as my own WIP... :)
It sounds interesting. I like the idea of an ordinary person being the heroine in an extraordinary magical story.
ReplyDeleteExcellent review, Meradeth!
ReplyDeleteThe premise sounds interesting and different. Sometimes our frame of mind infringes on our reading- I know I can be more critical when I am editing. :) Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDelete~Jess