What is it with Carole Matthews and her book titles recently? A few weeks ago I read All You Need Is Love (ta da da da daa) and now I have Freddie Mercury with his moustache and yellow jacket in my head. Not a bad image but quite distracting when you're trying to read and write.
As you may guess from the title, It's A Kind of Magic (gah! Every time I write this I'm doing the backing vocals) is a magical book. Chick lit with fairies. I am not averse to a bit of magical fantasy in any of the books I read, as long as it is done well. I loved Garden Spells where the magic and fantasy was applied in such a subtle way, it was still believable. With It's A Kind Of Magic, the magic was applied with a sledgehammer. Nevertheless I still found it entertaining.
Emma and Leo have been on and off for around five years. Emma is a neat and control freak whereas Leo is untidy, unreliable and, if I'm honest, a right, royal pain. On Emma's thirtieth birthday he rolls up over two hours late, drunk and falls into her birthday cake. Emma breaks it off and this time she means it.
Or does she?
Walking home that night Leo meets a woman on Tower Bridge. She comes home with him and turns his life upside down. For she is not human. She is a fairy - with a wand and everything.
And I can accept that, for it isn't the magic I have a problem with. What didn't quite ring true for me were the characters of Emma and Leo. Emma whines a lot about Leo, saying she loves him, but most of the time she just hates being on her own. Leo was meant to be cute, in a childlike way, but I just found him irritating and certainly not likable enough to root for him.
Despite all this I still found the book entertaining enough to want to finish it which is great as I have plenty that I am struggling to start at the moment. Carole has that great ability to suck you in and, by keeping her chapters short, with a mini cliffhanger at the end of each of them, you just have to carry on. She also made me laugh out loud a few times. Not something I am prone to do.
I would, however, have liked a different ending. I love romance and the bit where you finally see which people get it together. But when I finally closed the book I felt like I had eaten too much toffee (and I hadn't even had my breakfast yet). The words that popped into my mind were "sickly" and "sweet".
Rating: 3/5
Like this? Try I much preferred Carole's latest one (out in hardback) All You Need Is Love
