Set six months after the events of A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic, Dolgrilla Butterbuckle (and isn’t that just a name and a half) has settled in nicely to the village of Ardenshire. Sure, she’s away from her family, but seeing as they have always been disappointed by how she’s chosen to live her life, Doli isn’t too put out by the fact. She has her friends, romance novels, and copious amounts of tea, and nothing seems to be going wrong. Not until her parents announce they’re coming for a visit and she receives the dragon egg a relative has left her, which promptly hatches. Can Doli, of the perpetually fake smile hiding real anxiety, deal with her parents and a dragon baby at the same time? Maybe the newest resident of the village, a mysterious yet hunky gargoyle by the name of Sarson, can help with everything.
To be honest, I think I’m going to give Cozy Romantasy a rest for a couple of books, because this one mildly broke me. The writing was somehow simultaneously overly simplistic and extremely flowery. And let me not get started on the love confession scene; if anyone ever actually said that to me I would wonder what book they got it from. That kind of language doesn’t happen outside of Romantasy novels. For someone who claims to be so nice and to swallow down what she’s really thinking, Doli seems to spend a large chunk of the book either snapping at people or inwardly seething. And for someone who was obsessed with Sarson from the moment she first laid eyes on him, Doli spent spent most of their conversations giving the impressions (to me at least) that she couldn’t wait to get away from him. But hey, he’s been wanting to kiss you since the moment he first saw you, and you both love “bodice ripper” Romance novels, and you have an unhealthy obsession with his tail, so everything will work out all right! And of course the gargoyle’s voice is described as “gravelly”, because what else would you describe a gargoyle’s voice as? (If you can’t tell, that was sarcasm at the tired cliche of all that. Le sigh.)
Three “problems” in the book, all wrapped up in far too short a time; seriously, her relationship with her parents, her romance with Sarson, and what to do with the dragon and all the headaches that contains are solved within a maximum of two days. Arleta and Theo were so “in love” and sugary that my teeth hurt every time they were on the page. The character I probably empathized with the most was Jez, the cynic of the group. Though I will deduct points over the fact that she seems to think that the inheritance from Doli’s great-uncle was so important to unbox that she invited over all their friends to witness it so as to stop Doli from shoving it under her bed and forgetting about it. Personal space, can we have it now? Another small critique is that will all the fantastical names throughout the book, Penner decides Evangeline was the perfect name for the dragon; did you run out of ideas, or do you think that’s actually a extremely fantastical name?
(Who I always see when I read the name “Evangeline”)
The constant descriptions of people’s hairstyles, clothing and jewelry got real old, real fast. To top it all off, the recipes at the back, while delicious sounding, could use some judicious editing. Her “Blackberry Rolls with Custard Filling” have no instructions about the actually filling with custard, and thankfully her Oma-in-law is deceased and I (assume) Penner’s husband doesn’t read her books given the amount of passive-aggressive sniping contained in the backstory of the “Jam-filled Spice Cookies”.
I will still probably read the remaining three books in the series, but it will be a very long time and a very large amount of books between them.