Baker Thief by Claudie Arseneault Published: To be released June 26th, 2018 by the Kraken Collective
Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy with some science fiction elements
Binding: E-arc
Page Count: Around 400 but there's not a paperback yet.
Part of a series? Goodreads says this is the first in a series! I suspect it will be one that follows different characters in the same universe, not the same characters through different books.
Got via: Claudie sent it to me for review consideration. Claudie is a friend, which is why I broke my usual review rules, but this will not stop me from giving an honest review. Claudie, don't read this, okay? ;)
Amazon / Book Depository / Indiebound / Gumroad / Everywhere else
Summary (from goodreads): Adèle has only one goal: catch the purple-haired thief who broke into her home and stole her exocore, thus proving herself to her new police team. Little does she know, her thief is also the local baker.
Claire owns the Croissant-toi, but while her days are filled with pastries and customers, her nights are dedicated to stealing exocores. These new red gems are heralded as the energy of the future, but she knows the truth: they are made of witches’ souls.
When her twin—a powerful witch and prime exocore material—disappears, Claire redoubles in her efforts to investigate. She keeps running into Adèle, however, and whether or not she can save her sister might depend on their conflicted, unstable, but deepening relationship.
Review: This is none of the things I usually read, and I'm honestly kind of shocked by how much I liked it. I kind of signed up to review it on a whim, honestly, because the cover was really pretty and it had an interesting premise with some representation I was really excited about. I was honestly so impressed by how good this is, and it was a really fun read. I'm going to spend so much time bugging Luci to read this now because I think they'll love it and turnaround is fairplay.
Plot Talk: The summary is great, just read it. I'm so bad at trying to talk about plot, and the one already there is great. I will say that the execution of the plot is great. I did think it dragged just a tiny bit at the end, and could have been just a little tighter, but honestly it wasn't enough to make me want to stop reading or anything.
Oh, and since I usually put this here, the worldbuilding is great. It's set in a world that has magic alongside more futuristic technology/science, which is super cool. I really liked the blend of the magical elements with a more "modern" setting.
Characters: The characters are amazing in this. It's definitely one of the strongest elements, which I think after this long you all have noticed works for me. I actually don't want to give a certain thing away, so I'm going to neatly sidestep talking about the characters for the most part, besides that I really, really liked them. They're just... great.
And the thing I really do want to talk about is how great the diversity in this is. In the main characters, there is demisexual rep, aromantic rep, genderfluid rep, and that's not even getting into the side characters where you can find multiple instances of nonbinary representation, binary trans representation, more aromantic rep, and on and on. I also thought having a main character with asthma was something I don't see enough in books, and that's really interesting. It's just a lovely thing to read a book that so well reflects a diverse world.
PG-13 stuff: This is an adult book, so there is some adult content. Actually, the trigger warnings at the beginning of the book pretty much cover the section for this, so I'll just hit those up, honestly. General trigger warning for genocide, police violence, and then there are more specific ones for breaking and entering, gunshots, food, alcohol, mob violence, human experimentation and trafficking, accidental misgndering, fire/burns, and breathing difficulties/asthmas. There is also some sexual content - talk about sex and one POV character experiences sexual attraction/arousal and describes it. However, I don't think there's anything that a teen couldn't handle in this, and while it is NOT YA, I think the appeal for teens who also like to read adult books is totally there.
Gosh but this part's easier when the book does it for me.
Cons, complaints, bad stuff, etc.: I don't really have much? Besides that the plot dragged a tiny bit for me at one point, and the fact that it seriously made me hungry every single time I read it because of the amazing food descriptions, I honestly just enjoyed this and was really pleasantly surprised by how much I did.
Cover comments: The cover was totally the reason I was like "I want to read that", because it's so freaking cute. THERE IS A FAT CHARACTER BEING A SUPERHERO ON THE COVER. And it's purple! Like. Like honestly look at this on my blog. This is my colour scheme. This is QSR 2018's colour scheme. This is just everything. I kind of want to take inspiration from this for a page in one of my colouring books actually... but, yes. I love it.
Conclusion: Sorry if this is a bit short, but I don't have anything bad to say. I think this was super fun, and if you think the idea of witches and thieves and a whole lot of descriptions of really delicious sounding bread (which, if you preorder the book, you get a cookbook with it!) in a super diverse, unique universe sounds good, you should check this out. That includes you, Luce, you'll like this. It's only three dollars, and that is a great deal for a really, really good book. I spent more than that on Oreos today, y'all. Solid four out of five roses from me.
Other notes:
- Did I mention the fat rep is really, really good? This is going on my fat positive goodreads shelf for sure.
- There are really great sibling dynamics in here.
That's about it for me!
Peace and cookies,
Laina
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