Sweet & Bitter Magic

Tamsin is the most powerful witch of her generation. But after committing the worst magical sin, she’s exiled by the ruling Coven and cursed with the inability to love. 

–GoodReads

My Review

Cottagecore aesthetics with a sweet love story between a grumpy girl and a cinnamon roll girl?

Uh.

All the yes.

Tamlin is such a great character, to be fair they both are but because Tamlin is the first chapter, we get this sense of her struggle right off the bat. She committed a horrible magical sin in the name of love and they payment for that was to love the ability to love. It’s more than though, she lives in a world of black and white, while others have colors and spices and life, she is stuck in a gray haze.

Enter Wren. She is someone who has also given up so much for love, just in a different manner. Her father’s not well and she has given up everything to take care of him, her life, the secret that should have taken her far from home, her own happiness just to be there for him. She’s good, and pure in a way where Tamlin has seen too much to be as naive.

It is everything I ship in a couple but it’s more than romance. It’s heartache, grief, it’s learning what it means to truly love someone; to let them be themselves, sometimes without you (romantically and in regards to family).

Tamlin demands a high price to help Wren and Wren pays it. This finds us leaving the cozy cottage aesthetics to explore the world with them and it’s a lot of fun because Tamlin has seen this all before whereas Wren hasn’t. We get to see the duality of it and I think I would probably be like Wren, a bit in awe of it all.

The feelings we get from Tamlin and Wren both had me saying ‘aw’ out loud a lot. I’m not an ‘aww’ person so that was pretty impressive on its own but I truly loved these two.

World-building was fun, I think I would have even loved to extend their travels more. Tooley has a great writing voice and I honestly just flew through this book because it was so easy and the flow was so great to read.

The story is great though I wish it’d gone deeper with the conflict between Tamlin and -well I’m not going to spoil it for you so read and find out-. I thought the resolution for those two came too quickly but I did adore that the ending was so open ended and not because we’ll have another book but because when you’re young and in love the world seems so much bigger but you don’t know that this feeling will last forever. You can only hold onto it for as long as you have time together.

Is this review short and a little vague? Yes. Is it because when I’m in the depths of despair I forget to take notes? Also yes. So, please bear with the next few reviews. If you notice this is posted in October (2021) but are like ‘hey this didn’t show up until December’ it’s because I’m getting through my back log.

Anyway.

Strong characters, cute fluffy romance with some deeper feels, and an enjoyable story that could have gone deeper but overall a satisfying read. (Great for a cozy fall tbr)

4/5 cups of coffee from me! Onto the next one!