A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

“You haven't lived until you've seen a cookie look smug.”
I'm not exactly sure how a book can be funny, whimsical, cozy, and kind of macabre at the same time, but T. Kingfisher seems to be able to balance those elements to great effect. Even her darker stuff tends to have an unexpected witty side, so having what is essentially a cozy fantasy, also have a weird and morbid side doesn't surprise me. This is my first foray into her younger fiction and I was delighted. I haven't had this much fun with a book in quite a while. I laughed out loud and loved the use of magically baked goods as the basis for most of the shenanigans along the way. The book starts out as a sort of murder mystery but progresses into a much bigger-scale adventure, and I appreciated how the main character Mona is able to grow over the course of it. Mona has an amusing inner voice and I liked how she struggled with things along the way and wasn't just an instant hero or a Mary Sue character. She questions things, questions herself, and gets rightly emotional over what's happening and I found that gave her a levity you don't always find in kid's fiction. The supporting characters were an entertaining bunch of offbeat, peculiar, and quirky bunch, I especially liked Knackering Molly and her skeleton horse. I also think that T. Kingfisher doesn't sugar coat (LOL!) her story. There are real consequences at the end and not everything turns out okay. Mona struggles with this and I highly appreciated that Kingfisher doesn't treat kids like they can't handle the idea that endings aren't all happily ever afters, or if that's all they've read, to encounter and story that doesn't entirely go that route. I found this more meaningful than a lot of YA I've read recently which seems more concerned with eye-rolling romance and tropes than actually tackling something deeper. Anyway, I highly, highly recommend this book and I think it deserves the highest accolades. I continue to highly enjoy T. Kingfisher's writing and look forward to diving into more of her younger fiction soon.