Review: Magic for Liars

3/5 stars

Magic for Liars, by Sarah Gailey (2019)

Private investigator Ivy Gamble's meat-and-potatoes work is mostly following cheating spouses, and she does it while walking off a hangover, most days. Her twin sister Tabitha, on the other hand, is magic. Like, she can do actual magic. Tabitha and Ivy were close as young kids, but then Tabitha went to the prestigious Osthorne Academy for Young Mages, and their ties began to fray. Ivy likes to say she wants nothing more than her "simple" life, but she harps on her sister's accomplishments a bit too much for that to be believable. Her low self-esteem because of her inability to do magic seems like a major factor in her alcoholism and bad choices when it comes to men.

Then a murder takes place at Osthorne, and she is asked to investigate. She agrees, and moves to the dead woman's apartment on campus while she questions students and faculty. This includes her sister, who is now teacher there. Ivy continues to make a lot of bad choices, and as much as everyone says she's a fantastic PI, she seemed mostly to stumble into clues, as opposed to ferreting them out. Still, I liked the complexity of the magic system, and the murder mystery kept me interested til the end.

I also liked the development of their complex relationship and coming to terms with some of the things that drove them apart, including Tabitha's failure to return home when their mother was dying of cancer. The book plays with the idea of "a chosen one," à la Harry Potter, by way of another set of twins who are current students, which was also clever and interesting.

Overall, it was fine. I think the writing is good, but the main character was a little too whiny and immature to really care much about, and the plot was slow to develop.

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UP NEXT: The Language of Thorns, by Leigh Bardugo