A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

 

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is an adorable YA fantasy adventure for all ages by T. Kingfisher. Released 21st July 2020, it's 320 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

There are books which readers who have a lifetime reading habit can point to and say "this is one of the books that really hooked me". I am 100% sure this book will be "that book" for a lot of kids (and heck, maybe some adults). The protagonist is a kind, responsible, likeable teenager who works for her aunt in their family bakery and who can, on occasion, make gingerbread men dance with some minor magic. She doesn't think of herself as special... in fact nobody seems to think of her as particularly special, but she just might have to save her city from an invasion with her unremarkable magic. 

The story is simple and direct and engaging throughout. The writing is superb. There isn't one clunky scene or bit of dialogue which yanked me out of the story.  It came across my radar as a casual mention on one of my FB reader groups, and I picked it up on a whim. The author's name didn't ring a bell, but on closer inspection, she also wrote the Hamster Princess and Dragonbreath series, some of which I've reviewed on the blog. Delightful stuff and really one of the rare things - truly an all ages read. 

This would be a great selection for public or school library acquisition (codicil: there's a description of a girl who's discovered in the beginning scenes of the book and a fairly creepy antagonist (the murderer) throughout - not graphic, but creepy). It would also make a superlative choice for bedtime read with young(ish) kids. The writing and plotting are consistently better than HP, to give a comparison. 

Five stars. The mystery, resolution and denouement are self contained in this volume, but I sincerely hope there's more to come from Mona and her family.