I got this book, from a link on twitter promising to stuff your kindle with free romance novels. You could sort by format of e-reader, and genre. Fun, right? So I read Of Murders and Magic, the first in a series set in magical casino set in a made up town by Nikki Haverstock, who apparently hosted a reality tv archery competition in 2013 on NBCSports Network.
What else can I tell you about this author? Well, let me tell you, she’s incredibly fat phobic. Yep, so fat phobic it really irritated me and got in the way of everything else. She used words like blimp. Her main character, a mage, is skinny enough to fit into the skimpy waitressing outfits the casino employees wear. One of the running bits of the book is that the way mages recharge their energy drained when they use magic is through eating sugar. Which causes the main character a lot of anxiety about whether she is going to get fat. At one point, she describes her belly as being a little round. *gasp*
As for the story itself, it was fine. It was designed to set up the fact the main character realizes she is a mage, and for her to meet the owner of the casino, the aunt who will teach her about magic, and the grumpy security guy who will become a love interest. There’s a murder mystery where a key detail is dropped at the last second, but a lot of mysteries do that. A lot of the magic use is barely touched on including how it works, but I guess that will be explained in the rest of the books. That I will not be reading, because of the fat phobia!! Was that necessary to understand her character? Did it add anything to the story? Heck no! A book published in 2o17 should know better.
