SWEET & BITTER MAGIC | Adrienne Tooley
Okay, good. You’ve come to the right place. You need to pick up Sweet & Bitter Magic, right now.
Tamsin is a witch. Well, she was. She still is, sort of – but her power has been greatly reduced, and she has been cursed with the inability to love. She feels nothing for other people, can’t enjoy the taste or smell or sight of things, and the payment she requires when others come seeking her help is their love: for a child, for a husband. She takes it, and uses it up to perform the kind of petty magic she used to be able to do in her sleep.
Wren, who has been harbouring a secret for her entire life, has spent most of her years caring for her ill and ailing father. When dark magic rolls through the land, removing her father’s memories of her, she does the only thing she can: she sells her love for her father to the local witch in a bargain that in return, together, they will defeat the dark magic’s powers and cure the earth.
I truly enjoy the way Adrienne Tooley focuses on the growth of the characters throughout this book. The story is plot driven, yes, but both Wren and Tamsin undergo a radical (yet believable!) transformation over the course of their journey. They’re both also incredibly powerful, in two very different ways. Wren and Tamsin are both young – I think about 17 – and Tooley captures perfectly the power of a teenage girl, with a magical twist.
Sweet and Bitter Magic is definitely one of those books which will become an instant young adult classic. It’s delightfully written, with complex, flawed characters, and a lovely sapphic romance suffused with magic. Sweet and Bitter Magic shows us, beautifully, how love can both soften and strengthen. I will absolutely be reading more of Adrienne Tooley’s work – if this is her debut, I am so excited for what else is to come.
