Review – Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser, Book 1) by Meghan Ciana Doidge (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Length: 266 pages
Publisher:‎ Old Man in the CrossWalk Productions
Release Date: January 9, 2014
ASIN:B00DH5WVV6
Stand Alone or Series: 1st book in the Dowser series
Source: Bought ebook for Kindle
Rating: 3/5 stars

“If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the best cupcakes were dark chocolate with chocolate cream cheese icing, that dancing in a crowd of magic wielders — the Adept — was better than sex, and that my life was peaceful and uneventful. Just the way I liked it. That’s what twenty-three years in the magical backwater of Vancouver will get you — a completely skewed sense of reality. Because when the dead werewolves started showing up, it all unraveled … except for the cupcake part. That’s a universal truth.”

Series Info/Source: This is the first book in the Dowser series. I bought this on ebook for Kindle

Thoughts: I was looking for a fun, fluffy paranormal romance series to start and this was available for free on Kindle. This was okay. However, given the length and complexity of this series (it seems to weave in with two other series the author has written) I am not willing to continue it. Part of the issue is that you have to buy all of these; you can’t get them on Kindle Unlimited or from the library. Unfortunately, this isn’t the kind of series I want to own, it’s just not something I would ever re-read.

This series follows Jade, a 23 year bakery owner who can detect magic. She occasionally makes little trinkets out of things that have a magical signature. When a vampire shows up at her bakery and werewolves start showing up dead, she ends up drawn into a mystery that she would rather ignore.

Some aspects of the story are cute, but the story also misses the mark in a lot of areas and feels shallow to me. I love the idea of a bakery owning magic dowser. However, Jade wasn’t my favorite. She is way too ignorant “head in the sand” for a 23 year old and she was very whiny. She also missed some pretty big clues throughout the book. That is my other big issue with this book; the mystery around the murders is way too predictable here. I want to have to think a bit and have some twists and turns in mysteries, and this was so easy to figure out near the beginning of the story.

I think my favorite character was the vampire here; he had some depth and mystery to him and I would love to learn more about him. The werewolves in the story were just so typical werewolves and not filled out much besides the constant describing of their hot abs. All the other characters were similarly thin in actual character. I am curious to learn more about Jade’s mother and grandmother, but they were in the story so briefly that we don’t learn much about them.

I also felt like the humor was a bit flat throughout. Jade is supposed to be cute and witty, but I felt like more often her humor came off as whiny and a bit dim. The humor of those around her was often aimed at Jade’s inexperience, which just wasn’t that funny.

This was easy to read and was generally well written. It gets surprisingly gory for such a fluff read. I read this very quickly and was engaged in the story. Unfortunately, by the end, I kind of felt like…”Oh, was that it, okay”. This isn’t a story that I am going to remember for very long and it won’t leave a lasting impression on me.

My Summary (3/5): Overall this was okay but not great. The premise is cute, and I enjoyed a couple of the side characters. However, I found the plot really predictable and the main character to be annoying. If I could get these through my library or Kindle Unlimited I might read the second book to see if things improve just because this was a quick read with a cute premise. Unfortunately, I didn’t like this enough to shell out money to own more books in this series. I would rather check out a new series by an author I like that I know is on Kindle Unlimited. If you are interested in a similar type of paranormal story but with better plot and more engaging characters I would recommend checking out series written by Annette Marie, Elizabeth Hunter, or K.F Breene.