Olivia Kiskey is madly in love with her co-worker Tobias. Tobias seems quite interested, but keeps rebuffing her for...some reason. So Olivia's decided to book a nonrefundable ticket to Europe...which she is kind of not planning to return home from. A girl's gotta do something to change her life and get over a guy, right?
Well... those plans kind of go to hell when a strange woman comes into the diner they work in late at night, and she throws some kind of magical gym sock at Olivia. After that, Olivia finds out that she has a magical power, which has just come unlocked. Hers is to turn inanimate objects into cute woodland creatures. (I really want a ceramic mug bunny that crawls around now. SO CUTE!) Powers are either only useable during the day or at night--which makes it difficult when the person you're going up against has the opposite type of magic and you can't fight fire with fire. Kind of makes me wonder about the title of this when Olivia's a day-user, but anyway...
She also finds out from her boss Betty that the reason why her dad left as a kid was that some people wanted him dead for his magical power. At this point he's presumed dead, and Olivia finds out that the sister she never knew she had died recently. Someone's chasing down her family and stealing their magic, and Olivia's life is in danger. Would the problem be solved by giving up her magic? Or will that just kill her? And really, who wants to kill you for your ability to make cute animals, anyway? What do you use that for besides making pets that don't poop?
And then the whole magic problem starts spilling onto Olivia's best friends. After Millie finds out that Peach just got engaged to the guy Millie's always been in love with, Millie seems to well, snap and turn evil. Suddenly Olivia and Peach are getting attacked. What's going on? Soon the entire town is at risk from Olivia's unknown enemy, and she'll need to rely on whatever friends she has left and an unknown ally for help.
I liked this book, but did not love it. I really wanted to love it--this is a favorite author of mine but under a new pen name and I want her new stuff to take off-- but I just felt like there wasn't quite enough to it, even though it's an interesting story. The author had a lot of major life changes going on while writing it and well, in a way I guess I could tell that things weren't quite up to her usual. It's not quite as thorough, and when you're going into the full on fantasy realm, you kind of need it. And plot details could have been clearer here and there. We didn't have time to see Olivia use her powers much beyond making the occasional (adorable) animal, we don't really get to experience much of the magical world, we don't really find out that much about what the hell went down with Olivia's parents, and we don't really find out much about Tobias and the magical security firm. I just wanted more detail, background, and worldbuilding (which is something I LOVE in fantasy fiction) and there didn't seem to be time for that. Maybe that's a publisher thing, though--wanting a shorter book.
I understand that there will be a sequel, but with a different heroine as the focus, mostly because the publisher did not want to focus on the same character through multiple books. I think that's a shame because I felt like this was kind of just getting started. I'd like to see the world and characters continue on, and I'll certainly read the next book. But I wanted it to be more fully realized than it was for me. However...maybe that is just me being picky. I don't know. I feel really bad writing this review and that's why it's taken me most of a week to do it. This may just be a problem for me and not for anyone else.
A few other quibbles:
Midway through the book you find that one character is ... well, they have another agenda than what they'd told you so far. Admittedly, Olivia figures it out, but you want to kick her as she makes some choices that would only lead her into the trap. Yeah, I know you have to figure out that someone's bad by having them do something bad, but I still don't like that "NOOOO, DON'T GO INTO THE WOODS BY YOURSELF" horror movie feel of vicarious blindness, and it was kind of going there.
While I like the title of the book, it's a little odd when the heroine's powers (indeed, almost everyone's powers except the villain's) work in daytime. Just a thought.
Overall I'm going to give it three and a half stars. I still recommend it, I guess I was just expecting there to be a bit more to it than there was. But that may just be me, and the nature of supernatural fantasy chick lit-ish books, so keep that in mind.
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