Enjoyable YA adventure.

More to follow ... ( )

assassins, baker, baking, canals, cozy-mystery, falsely-accused, friends, friendship, inquisitor, law-enforcement, magic, orphaned, read, unputdownable, urban-fantasy, verbal-humor, wizard, ya-only-means-no-gratuitous-erotica*****

Mona is a magicker with influence over yeast/bread/baked goods. She found the body of another magicker on the floor of the bakery where she works and is brought to the castle to be judged as the murderer. And then things get really weird. Great fun and unputdownable! ( )

This was very cute!
It was a straightforward story about a normal girl from a bakery who did not sign up for any of this.
Mona doesn't have impressive magic, she can only manipulate bread. She gets accused of murdering the dead person found in her bakery and from then on it spirals into saving her city and escaping assassins.

I liked how Mona was the type of main character who didn't want to be a main character. It felt refreshing among the many adventurous middle grade heroes.
I also liked how the magic and the kingdom were kept small. The kingdom is more of a city, and the magic is the magic of average people living their lives.
It gave the story a cosy fairytale feeling as opposed to grand epic fantasy.

It felt more like a middle grade book than a YA, but I didn't mind. If you're looking for a serious YA fantasy, this isn't it though. ( )

Really entertaining YA fantasy. In a medieval setting, Mona is an apprentice baker with a pinch of magic, a small scale wizard in a city state where few are.
When she finds a dead girl in the bakery one morning, she gets involved in investigating the disappearance of the smattering of wizards of her city. Her life is threatened, as is the whole city state, and as the sole remaining wizard in the city, she find innovative ways of deploying her baking magics to defend the city.

The story have humour without being funny, and quite a lot of heart without being sentimental. A lot of action and drama made relatable by Monas singular voice - it is not a lot of novels where the protagonist throws up on multiple occasions. ( )

Kingfisher, T. A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. Argyll Productions, 2020.
I like T. Kingfisher’s work best when she uses a light touch as she does in A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. It is a coming-of-age story about Mona, a 14-year-old baker who has a little magic, but it is all in the dough. Her familiar is a sourdough starter named Bob and there is an animated gingerbread man who kicks ass. Somehow all the fireball-throwing wizards are out of town when the city is threatened, and she has to learn quickly how to weaponize her culinary skills to save the city. 4 stars. ( )