🪄🐊🪼 🍱 Books with Magic and Magical Food

 

Enjoyed the spirit and intent of the book. Lovely characters. Worthy quest. Fun magic.

    Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong is a book about being transplanted from your native soil to a new home. Tao discovers she has the gift of seeing the future, and many want her to use it for them. She chooses to travel alone and tell small fortunes but finds she can't escape the pull of human connection. I liked this lovely YA book. It's a good story, well told, no matter your age.

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    What the River Knows by Isabel Ibañez rides the line between fantasy and magical realism. There is magic in the world, but it is unacknowledged and ignored. The magic is fading away and resides in ancient objects. Inez Olivera receives a magic ring from her father in Egypt. This is followed by news of the death of her parents, making Inez the recipient of their considerable fortune and the ward of her mother's mysterious uncle, an Egyptian Archeologist at the height of the age of discovery in the late 19th century. She travels by ship from her home in Buenos Aries to Egypt to find answers but is thwarted by her uncle's handsome assistant. This book reminded me of adventure stories like The Mummy, with lots of twists and turns, kidnapping, and dark secrets held by almost everyone.

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    Like many people, I enjoyed Matt Haig's book The Midnight Library and eagerly looked forward to his next book, The Life Impossible. A strength of Haig is his ability to create fantastic premises to give his characters unique opportunities to confront their pasts. The Life Impossible is the story of 72-year-old Grace Winters, a retired math teacher who is done with life. She unexpectedly receives the gift of a house on the island of Ibiza in Spain. Some books are quirky, and some are weird. This book is a weird one. The plot is a little too crazy to feel coherent, but I found it interesting because weird is my jam.

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    I have discovered a type of genre from Japan that is whimsical and poignant, like Toshikazu Kawaguchi's Before the Coffee Gets Cold, We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, What You Are Looking For is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama, and The Cat Who Saved Books by Susuke Matsukawa. I was talking with friends about how much I liked those books, and they recommended The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai. Here is the premise: a retired, widowed police detective runs an obscure, hard-to-find diner with a thirty-year-old daughter. They also run a food detective agency helping customers find the recipe that holds a significant place in their heart- the soup their dead mother made, a restaurant meal from when a lost love proposed, or a special dish enjoyed with a grandfather who now has dementia. These recipes are like keys to unlock a better understanding of the past that, in turn, makes the future brighter. This book will make you hungry!

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