Aali Hashim's Reviews > The Confectioner's Guild

i received this via netgalley in exchange for an honest review

on paper, the confectioner’s guild sounds like an awesome concept for a fantasy series - it’s literally filled with magic food. how cool is that?? the main character, wren, finds out she has been making magical cupcakes for years, and is taken to the confectioner’s guild to receive training. but in the process of explaining the magic to wren, the head of her guild is killed, and wren is blamed. the book follows her journey as she tries to clear her name, as well as learn all she can about the magic within the different guilds.

what i loved about this book was the magic system, and how there was enough mystery around it to make me want to read the other books in the trilogy. the world building was good and well paced. the descriptions of food made me so hungry, and i loved learning about the other guilds and their magic.

unfortunately, the way the book was written also negated a lot of the good things. for example, i loved the fact that there were wholesome characters and relationships. too often, in fantasy books, everything is dark and depressing and everyone is evil. but that was not the case in this book. everyone was kind (except for the villains i guess), and that was cool in the beginning, but when every single character is just completely good™, then it isn’t believable and just reads like a children’s book. but, towards the end of the story, some of the good™ characters end up doing horrible things, which i don’t think they can come back from (like strangling the main character for example), and it’s back to being a dark and depressing fantasy for 5 mins, until the mc decides to forgive them. a lot of the dialogue and wren’s thoughts felt childish, even though this is clearly a ya book.

the romance was honestly the worst, because it was insta love, and i cannot stand that. considering that this series is a trilogy, the romance could have slowed down a lot. in the beginning, it felt natural, but then it became so forced.

the murder investigation was interesting, but it made absolutely no sense to me that wren would have access to a crime scene and its evidence, even though lucas was helping her. lucas taking the one piece of evidence that could prove her innocence and keeping it in his house (where it later gets contaminated) is beyond stupid.

finally, i don’t believe that a girl who is on trial for murder, and most likely about to be hanged, can spend time making macarons, playing dress up and obsessing over boys. it just didn’t make any sense.