Book Review

A Spoonful of Magic by Irene Radford

Trigger warnings for rape, gaslighting, infidelity, and discussions of Joss Whedon.

I  DNF’d this book so hard I’m a little surprised my Kindle isn’t embedded in the drywall.

First, a few points.

  1. I am aware (and was aware when I started this book) that this is Not a Romance. I am not carrying into this review my romance-reader expectations on happy or optimistic endings.
  2. I started this book while the coverage of Kai Cole’s essay on Joss Whedon’s infidelity and gaslighting was everywhere, which was a weird parallel that accentuated my revulsion.
  3. This book does not come out until November 7, which is a good ways off. Usually I don’t post reviews so far in advance, but I’ll probably complain about this book more than once before pub date.

I picked up this book because the NetGalley description sounded really intriguing:

A delightful new urban fantasy about a kitchen witch and her magical family

Daphne “Daffy” Rose Wallace Deschants has an ideal suburban life—three wonderful and talented children; a coffee shop and bakery, owned and run with her best friend; a nearly perfect husband, Gabriel, or “G” to his friends and family. Life could hardly be better.

But G’s perfection hides dangerous secrets. When Daffy uncovers evidence of his infidelity, her perfect life seems to be in ruins. On their wedding anniversary, Daffy prepares to confront him, only to be stopped in her tracks when he foils a mugging attempt using wizard-level magic. 

Suddenly, Daphne is part of a world she never imagined–where her husband is not a traveling troubleshooter for a software company, but the sheriff of the International Guild of Wizards, and her brilliant children are also budding magicians. Even she herself is not just a great baker and barista—she’s actually a kitchen witch. And her discovery of her powers is only just beginnning [sic]. 

But even the midst of her chaotic new life, another problem is brewing. G’s ex-wife, a dangerous witch, has escaped from her magical prison. Revenge-bent and blind, she needs the eyes of her son to restore her sight—the son Daffy has raised as her own since he was a year old. Now Daphne must find a way to harness her new powers and protect her family—or risk losing everything she holds dear.

As I said, I didn’t go into this book expecting a romance at all, but what I got made me SO angry.

The book opens with Daffy at a 13th anniversary dinner with her husband, and she’s pissed. Someone has emailed her pictures of him having wild sex with another woman, just after the people of their small (and of course sort of weird) town saw him around when he said he was overseas. When she confronts him with the pictures and then leaves the restaurant, three dudes attempt to mug her, but he stops them with his wooden fountain pen which is actually his magic wand.

She thought he was a low-level “parlor trick” magician, similar to some of the semi-magical people around their town. Turns out he has serious magical abilities, but he only tells her that much because she saw them. He won’t answer her questions about his having sex with someone else, and keeps insisting that she not kick him out because he has to keep her and their three children safe.

I was thinking maybe at some point she’d realize her kitchen witch powers and set him on fire, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the story follows Daffy ( she’s a magical baker in a magical coffee shop in a magical small town) and her children, who are beginning to manifest their powers.

I liked that not everything is explained up front. There’s no infodumpy reverie from the protagonists – not even when G should have been explaining things because clearly Daffy is devastated and betrayed by his infidelity –  and there isn’t much random “As you know,” from ancillary characters. The world is built in small doses, and while some of it is cliched (magical small town coffeeshop bakery because of course magical small town coffeeshop bakery), it made me curious enough to keep going.

I was confused by the fact that there are dual points of view, with Daffy’s narration in first person, and G’s perspective in third person, but I figured that was a choice that would make sense later.

Unfortunately, I have no interest in getting to later. I stopped and I will not be moved.

Let me back up and explain some of the setup here. G doesn’t acknowledge how those pictures happened, except to say (of course) that it’s not what she thinks. He says that cameras can’t capture illusions, and that someone had to have hacked his email account because he didn’t send the pictures.

So he did have sex with someone but he didn’t mean to send his wife evidence?

Huh.

This is 2% in to the story so I was willing to keep going.

Then G explains that the world is really dangerous and she and their children need him around to protect them.

But he won’t say from what, and he won’t talk about whether he did cheat on her, despite visible evidence.

Then he says they’ve had “thirteen wonderful years together” and that he needs her “now more than ever.”

Daffy calls him on his bullshit:

“You need me to babysit your children. Thirteen years when I’ve raised your son as my own. I adopted him on our wedding day, so he’d never need to ask about the mother who died giving birth to him. I’ve given you two wonderful daughters, kept house, cooked, and picked up after you.”

And here is G’s sensitive, thoughtful reply:

“And I love you for that. I do truly love you despite the temptations I face every day. I built you a wrought iron-and-glass greenhouse that fills a quarter of the backyard where the stables used to be. That should prove something of my devotion to you.”

You. Have Got. To be. Fucking. Kidding. Me.

He built a greenhouse where the stables used to be so obviously she’s not focusing on the right details.

And while I’m looking at this paragraph, “The temptations I face every day?

Are you SERIOUS?!

His argument reminded me with a sick feeling of the coverage of Kai Cole’s account of her marriage wherein Whedon was cheating on her for 15+ years. That whole “temptation” whine sounded nauseatingly familiar. It was kind of eerie that this was the book I picked up immediately after I read her essay.

I mean, gosh, it’s so difficult to not stick your dick in other people.

Such a burden to be basically decent when you’re a successful, powerful dude.

I just strained every one of my ocular muscles.

Anyway, Daffy kicks his ass out of their home, and the story continues as their divorce gets closer to being finalized. The kids, it turns out, know about the cheating because one of them is drawn to locks, puzzles, and things she shouldn’t be looking at. She clicked her way into her mother’s hard drive and saw the images, which she promptly shared with her siblings.

(Yeesh.)

(And as an aside: Daffy blames herself for not doing a better job of protecting her files, since she knew her daughter was drawn to all puzzles, locks, and passwords. Do people with magical abilities have a free pass to be completely crappy humans in this world?? I cannot with that part.)

Daffy is determined that she be able to at least cordially co-parent with G, and tries to work out ways for him to be part of their lives. This becomes more complicated when each child begins manifesting signs of their own magical ability, some far earlier than normal, and all with considerable amounts of power.

Plus, G’s narration reveals that Daffy was raised in a fundamentalist household, and that her grandmother had been a magical practitioner. To get his daughter away from the “evil influence,” Daffy’s father had his mother committed and subjected to electric shock treatments. Daffy never saw her again. As a result of her own parents’ indoctrination and the absence of her grandmother, Daffy’s own magic is severely suppressed. But no doubt her own talents combined with G’s mean that their children are like a Semi-Nuclear Pre-Teen Magical Titan Fantastic Squad.

The Kids are All Magical was a really tempting element to this story for me. Each one is compelled to find their personal wand, which can take the shape of a mundane item, usually an antique that “calls” to them. One has two sticks that she wears in her hair with ornaments on them which transform her from awkward teen to beautiful siren, and another, the lock-breaking boundary-obliterating one, is later drawn to an item that’s connected with her talents.

G’s son, Daffy’s adopted son, is a talented ballet dancer, and they figure out pretty early in the story what his “wand” is, and how it accentuates and focuses his power. And his dedication to dance and to practice and training make it pretty clear he’ll be very powerful the more time he spends dancing. He was one of my favorite characters in the parts that I read. I’d read a whole book about him.

For the next few chapters, Daffy and G are separated, and she slowly learns more about who he really is (very little of that information is provided by G himself) while trying to set up new boundaries for his involvement in her life, and trying to understand what her powers are or might be.

Then there are two major revelations, one of which I will hide behind spoiler tags:

Spoiler and Trigger Warning: Rape

It seems that G’s ex is not dead, but is in magic prison for killing a bunch of people, including his parents. Except she’s escaped from magic prison, and has been killing people all over the world.

AND she used her magic to make herself look like Daffy, so that when G was having sex with her, he thought he was with his wife. Evil Ex-Wife took the pictures, hacked his email, and sent them to Daffy, knowing she’d kick her husband out, leaving her and her children – specifically her son – vulnerable.

So effectively, she raped her ex-husband and framed him for cheating on his wife.

I read that part, and said, “WHOA.” Out loud. But quietly because people were sleeping.

And I was waiting for G to sit Daffy down and explain the whole thing, about the danger to the children, about the circumstances for the pictures, all of it.

But he doesn’t.

He doesn’t seem upset about what happened to him except that his ex-wife is dangerous (and also not dead but everyone thinks that she is). He doesn’t explain what’s happening, he doesn’t reveal how he’s lied and concealed information about Daffy, about their kids, about anything. He knows best – for himself.

And I grew increasingly angry at him for it. He’s wrapped up in some willful deceit and manipluation to not tell Daffy the truth about her own life, about the children she’s raising, about her own marriage, and their collective vulnerability.

He’s supposed to be able to protect them? From what, his own dickbaggery?

Then I completely lost my shit.

G. brings pizza and wine to the bakery, where Daffy is setting up the dough on a Sunday night for the Monday morning baking. He mentions that he’ll be heading out of the country on some big case, and she reacts with some asperity (completely justified, to my thinking):

“Have fun,” I said with more than a bit of contempt.

G didn’t need to read my mind to know where my thoughts led me. He reached over and rested his big hand atop mine. I looked small and frail in comparison to his strength.

“It’s not always like that, Daffy.”

“Like what?” I fixed him with a determined glare.

“Look, I have, upon occasion, found release with another woman when I was far away from you and the amount of magic I had to case in order to close a case was too much to contain. Not often. Not habitually. There is always a woman of age I can pick up in a bar who is very willing to share a one-night stand. And I always use a condom.”

He paused long enough to chew a bit of pizza and swallow it. “Normally I hop the first flight home and return to you, my love.”

Aaaand that would be where I stopped reading.

Because are you KIDDING ME? 

Seriously.

At the foundation level of this story, I believe I am supposed to witness G redeeming himself or something. Maybe Daffy needs to show him how not to be a terrible person (which he should have figured out on his own) or maybe he is going to wake his own sorry ass up and realize what a shit he’s been, but I am not here for any of it.

G is the gatekeeper of information Daffy needs and should have, and lies to her every time they talk. And based on the direction of the plot so far, eventually they will probably go fight evil together or something.

I don’t know, and I don’t care.

I can’t invest myself in wanting any part of his involvement in her life, or in this book. I won’t be convinced, ever, that he is a person Daffy should have in her life. I won’t be convinced to read about him, either.

His inability to acknowledge his actions, and the way in which the world of the book seems to condone the fact that he lies to Daffy, misleads her, and banged people behind her back without telling her made me feel ill, similar to how I felt when I read Kai Cole’s essay. “I did something wrong over and over but it wasn’t my fault because magic/patriarchy/both” is not heroic, not in real life, and not in a book.

(And how exactly does using a condom makes it ok, you magical dipshit? Come on.)

The longer he deceives Daffy and hides the truth from her about her life, her marriage, his past, her children, her latent powers, and her future, the more he strips her of any agency in a story that is ostensibly about her. Life is way too short to spend my reading time with a character like that, and, as Amanda pointed out to me as we discussed this book, it’s very easy for me to put down the book and walk away – far easier than it may be for a person in a marriage as damaging as this one.

Daffy can’t get away from G, and he’s orchestrated everything so that she won’t be able to extricate herself from any involvement with him. He hasn’t told her anything resembling the truth, and the ethical systems and morality of the magical world seem to condone his decisions and the harm he does to Daffy and their family.

To hell with him, and people like him. I’m out.

ETA: Out of morbid curiosity, I flipped to the last chapter to read how it ends. So while I did not finish the book, I did read the end.

Show Spoiler

Daffy, G, and the kids defeat the Evil Ex Wife, and G and Daffy have outstanding sex, but then she tells him to leave. She’s going to date other people, and he can as well, but they should start over. She married him too young, and needs a chance to know herself before she commits to him again. So I’m guessing there will be another book at some point.

Good going, Daffy. Way to toss him out.

But the door is still open for him to come back in, and so I’m not interested in reading the rest.

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A Spoonful of Magic by Irene Radford

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  1. Deborah says:

    “Look, I have, upon occasion, found release with another woman when I was far away from you and the amount of magic I had to [use?] in order to close a case was too much to contain.”

    So…the way magic works in this universe is that when you use your powers, magical forces build up inside of you that can only be released via intercourse or your head will immediately explode? I will read the sequel to this book if magic baker lady has to sit down with her kids and have the sex talk based on that logic.

    Thank you for flipping to the end. There’s always a part of me that believes the author will save their train wreck (and sometimes they do!), so DNF reviews that don’t skip ahead can leave me wondering.

  2. Lora says:

    So….the magic overload makes him need to have sex or go crazy? And he can’t just get on pornhub and take care of himself?

    ALL THE RAGE.

    I can’t with this but I loved your review.

  3. jimthered says:

    Painful as this book is, I would absolutely read a comic book titled Semi-Nuclear Pre-Teen Magical Titan Fantastic Squad.

  4. Meg says:

    I DNF’d this book so hard I’m a little surprised my Kindle isn’t embedded in the drywall. – This is a level of rage I’ve only had at the final book of the Earth’s Children series. But damn, after this review, this comes in at a very close second.

  5. Gemma says:

    He always uses a condom when he cheats. Guess we should give him a medal, then!

    WTAF???!!!

    Kudos to you for managing to not break your Kindle over this. All the rage.

  6. Gemma says:

    I was reading this and at more than one point I had my hands clenched into fists over my head, ready to Hulk Smash everything.

  7. Ren Benton says:

    There is a staggering amount of “I need orgasms because magic” wherein masturbation could solve/prevent literally every conflict in the books, both personal and societal. When all the sex is nefarious (compulsion, coercion, manipulation) and self-service is nowhere on the menu, there’s a whole world view there I want nothing to do with, for the sake of my drywall.

  8. Sheryl says:

    This sounds like a book written about thirty years ago, when that sort of behavior might be acceptable. “Might” being used with a hell of a lot of disbelief.

    I’d expect better from DAW.

    😛

  9. Rose says:

    Is…is this satire? Really poorly done satire? I just…I can’t comprehend any way this could be written seriously.

  10. Lostshadows says:

    “I DNF’d this book so hard I’m a little surprised my Kindle isn’t embedded in the drywall.”

    One of the definite advantages of paper over e.

  11. PamG says:

    I think they might have lost me at “Daffy.”

  12. PamG says:

    I have a question for you. If a book goes on sale that one or all or some of the SBs hate or DNF, is it included in Books on Sale posts?

  13. cleo says:

    I’d missed the Joss Whedon story so I had no idea why discussing him was in the trigger warnings. I’m not sorry, exactly, that I read Kai Cole’s essay but it is really upsetting and infuriating. Good for her for sharing her side and putting her life back together.

  14. Anonymous says:

    So, full disclosure: I would absolutely be interested in reading something where relieving magical energy overloads via sexual intercourse was a key part of the worldbuilding, because I think that could be interesting as a thought experiment. How would it work? What are the implications? How might it influence the culture?

    But… that is not this thing. This isn’t a nuanced and carefully thought out exploration as to how a society might be shaped if that were a basic fact about magic; this is just a random detail superimposed on basic American cultural values to excuse an asshole’s cheating on his wife so he can have a redemption arc later on. That’s neither nuanced nor interesting; it’s manipulative and insulting. Ugh.

  15. Amanda says:

    @PamG: It depends really. Normally, I try not to feature books that receive less than a C grade, unless the review was something along the lines of an F+ or is rooted in SBTB history. Also, I haven’t read every book we’ve featured on sale, so comments by the Bitchery in the BoS posts are really important, especially if a book picked has some troubling elements that I wasn’t previously aware of.

    But if you’d be interested in sale titles of books we rated poorly, I’d be open to hearing your opinion.

  16. cleo says:

    @Anonymous

    I would absolutely be interested in reading something where relieving magical energy overloads via sexual intercourse was a key part of the worldbuilding, because I think that could be interesting as a thought experiment. How would it work? What are the implications? How might it influence the culture?

    Have you read the Magic University series by Cecelia Tan? Sex and magic are pretty intertwined in it and the world building is quite interesting. The story is kind of if Harry Potter went to college in the US, discovered that he has a talent for sex magic (esoteric arts), has a lot of sex, both magical and mundane, and THEN saves the world. It’s not a perfect series and it’s more queer na / fantasy than romance – there is a central romance with a satisfying hfn, but you don’t get that until the 4th book and the hero has multiple partners before then.

    Iirc, the esoteric arts are definitely looked down on, in this world but within the sex-magic community, there’s a lot of protocols built around properly building up and/or discharging one’s magic through sex, including masturbation. And one of the themes is sexual repression and how denying sexuality as a culture messed up the world’s magic. It tackles a lot of big themes (sexual repression, gender identity and gender fluidity, and recovery from abuse) – not completely successfully imo but it’s a really fun and interesting series.

  17. Anonymous says:

    @cleo — Thanks! I will definitely look into this.

  18. Sarahlynn says:

    Upon further reflection another point jumps out at me. This guy feels virtuous because he frequently (but not always) resists the temptations in his path. And when he seeks out a dalliance he’s still virtuous because:
    a) condom
    b) the other women were “of age”
    c) he comes home, after.

    I mean. Why does he even need to specify that the women are “of age” like this is some high standard he holds himself to? Like: I could be doing what I really want – picking up preteens in schoolyards instead of women “of age” in bars.

  19. SB Sarah says:

    @Sarahlynn: First, can I say that I love your name? I mean, I like it for obvious reasons but “Sarahlynn” is a beautiful name.

    Second, YES, OH MY GOSH. That was jarring for me, too. I’m supposed to give him credit for making sure that his magic depository partners were “of age?” I would think that’d be the bare minimum of decent human behavior, apart from the whole “Not cheating on your wife” thing.

  20. H says:

    I probably shouldn’t even attempt opening this book then… I have a hard time DNFing books once I start them. I remember finishing this really awful book where the guy acted like an entitled prick the whole time, and continuously saying and doing things that showed the heroine should feel lucky he even looked her way just because he was born rich and apparently hot. The heroine was a self-made business woman, btw, but was poor before. It was like Chinese water torture, but I can’t not finish it. I kept hoping for some sort of redemption arc in the story for the guy, but alas, no. In the end, he proposed to her in public and it was like, that little concession made all his douchebaggery ok.
    I did throw my Kindle at the end, though. But just on the bed.

  21. I’m still trying to follow the “logic” used to justify the cheating by the “hero.” If the poor dear just couldn’t help himself because he had to use up all that pesky magic, is there any reason why he couldn’t have told the heroine about this condition before they got married? So he would be, oh, I don’t know, open and honest with her about it, let her know what life with him would be like?

  22. Janet says:

    So how did it end? I am not ever going to read it but now i am curious

  23. Tam B. says:

    @ Anonymous

    Shelley Laurenston wrote a short called The Wolf, The Witch and Her Lack of Wardrobe (I think) and in it the witch, as a result of working larger spells,gets horny.
    BUT
    When she decides that she’s going to commit to the guy in the book, she decides if he can’t meet her needs, she’ll maintain her battery order for her vibrator.
    BECAUSE she’s not using her magic as an excuse to f**k other people.

    Amazon should really look into making a mega protective case just so you can enjoy throwing it at the wall in these circumstances.

  24. MsCellanie says:

    Of the many things that suck about this, is that it seems like it could be an interesting premise – kind of “True Lies” but with magic. (FTR, “True Lies” is also very problematic during the entire middle section).
    I would like to read the book where the main character finds out her husband is a spy/superwizard. But not if he’s also an asshole. That’s not the book I want, and had I read just the blurb, I think I would have been fooled into buying the wrong book.

    Also, I very rarely have problems with morally repugnant characters, so long as the creator knows that the character they’ve written is not a good person, that the actions they are doing are not ok. Some creators have very intentionally written monsters (compelling, interesting, dynamic monsters, but monsters, nonetheless). They explain the actions, but they do not excuse them. Those are usually not a problem for me. But some people seem completely unaware of just how horrible their characters actually are. This author seems like one of the second group.

  25. Him: “Hey, honey, remember that job I have where I have to take long business trips but I can’t tell you anything about it? Well, sometimes on those business trips I have Needs and I have to find a woman to take care of them. But it’s okay, ’cause I use a condom and I make sure she’s over age, boy howdy did I learn my lesson on that one, and by the way, if we have kids and any of them turn out to start doing weird things that look like magic, well, that’s just your imagination ’cause there’s no such thing as magic. I mean, if I thought there was a chance we’d have magical children I’d have mentioned it before getting married.”
    Her: “This wallpaper is yellow. I think it is talking to me.”

  26. Kris Bock says:

    I have loved some of Josh Whedon’s work, but I don’t like how he ends things. It’s so clear that he doesn’t believe in love. No one gets a happy ending in his world. I guess he brings that cynicism into his home life as well.

  27. Heather S says:

    @jimthered: I think the closest you can get to that comic is the 80s Marvel classic series Power Pack. The kids even get to befuddle Wolverine, which I remember being highly entertaining.

  28. Heather S says:

    That was supposed to put the title: Power Pack. Jeez Louise, I hate trying to use HTML.

  29. SB Sarah says:

    @Heather S: All fixed, no worries!

  30. Louise says:

    <fe>
    Whee, hurrah and woo hoo, my favorite character (arche)type: The Evil Ex-Wife, whose character is exactly the same as it would be if Husband had created her. Because nobody ever lies about that.
    </fe>

  31. Lils says:

    anyone else who puts the author of a book with such an unlikable train wreak on the “I’m never going to read another” list? anyone who gave them a second chance and you’re glad you did?

    SB Sarah thank you for this review.

  32. Chel says:

    I wish this was in the library so I could read it for the worldbuilding and kid characters without giving the author money for the awful storyline.

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