I get a lot of my TBR books from the podcast, What Should I Read Next?. Almost as many as I did from the Books on the Nightstand podcast (RIP). In one of the episodes, Anne mentions Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey. It's a debut novel about a non-magical detective brought in to solve a magical murder. But why, you ask? Why not a magical detective?
Well, my friend, because the mages couldn't solve it.
Ivy Gamble isn't magical, she's not special, she drinks a lot, she's 40 and single and a private detective. At the beginning of the book, she gets mugged. She's not extraordinary. Ivy will be telling us all of this throughout the book. At first, this was hard to listen to, the woe-is-me ad nauseum, but Ivy grew on me. Somehow through the course of the novel, she strengthens, grows and matures. Just not necessarily how she wanted.
Ivy's twin sister, Tabitha, is a genius mage and a professor at the Osthorne Academy for Young Mages. Ah, now we see why Ivy struggles with not being special. Her twin sister IS. Special, magical, brilliant, and, we learn, cruel to young Ivy. Because of the connection, Ivy is hired by the headmaster to solve the murder of Sylvia, a teacher who was literally torn in half in the library.
Ivy may no be magical but she's damn good at her job. Magic eludes her so we learn along with her how things work in the here and now magical world. This isn't Hogwarts, guys. This is a regular school with hormonal teens, bullies, popular girls, teen pregnancies, etc. Except they are magic. And one of them is the Chosen One.
Once I got past the woe-is-me Ivy (this may have something to do with the narrator? Not sure), I warmed up pretty quickly to the story itself. I suspected the who in the WhoDunIt, but not the why. One thing you get out of this book is reality: families are hard. Relationships are hard. But sometimes you need to do the hard stuff because it will eventually be worth it.
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