Sweet & Bitter Magic feels like a breath of fresh air in the world of YA fantasy

For those of us who read a lot of YA fantasy, it can often feel like there are only so many different kinds of stories, no matter how talented specific authors may be at telling them. (And, let’s be honest, a lot of them are really great at it.) But every so often a story comes along that feels like something utterly new – and that’s precisely what Adrienne Tooley’s debut novel Sweet & Bitter Magic does.

The story follows Tamsin, a seventeen-year-old witch doomed to never feel emotion again as punishment for a desperate choice she made when she was just twelve years old. Banished from the Coven and essentially exiled to the human realms, she spends her days making deals with the people of her village, trading spells for their love. Absorbing others’ emotions is the only way Tamsin can feel anything, and she’s resigned to herself to a gray, empty life, thanks to her curse.

Seventeen-year-old Wren lives in the same village. Unbeknownst to those around her, Wren is a Source, a human made of magic who cannot use it herself but who can serve as a conduit to increase the strength of witches. Rather than journey to the Witchlands to train when she realized her true identity, Wren has kept her abilities secret in order to stay at home to care for her chronically ill father.

However, when a new dark plague descends upon their village and infects her father, Wren turns to Tamsin for help rather than watch him lose his memories. And so a deal is struck – Tamsin will help Wren find the dark sorceress whose magic created the curse, and if they’re successful, Wren will give Tamsin her love for her father.

Set in a thoughtfully nuanced world, Sweet & Bitter Magic is a family drama, a magical adventure, and an achingly slow-burn romance all rolled into one. Tamsin’s stunted emotional ability allows us to get to know both women without the pressure of an instant relationship on top, and Tooley skillfully weaves her connection to Wren into a larger story about Tamsin’s own past. For her part, Wren’s desire to help others is treated as admirable rather than naive, and rather than simply exist as Tamsin’s love interest, she’s on her own journey to figure out where she belongs.

But, of course, a story like this doesn’t work unless its central relationship does, and, thankfully, Tamsin and Wren are charming together from their very first meeting (when the witch pays for some eggs with false coins). As they travel together, it becomes increasingly clear that both are more than good for each other, and will ultimately be the tools by which they become their best selves.

Their search for a dark sorceress is not without peril, of both the emotional and physical variety. Tamsin not only must face the fallout from the worst thing she’s ever done, but she must also recalibrate her entire understanding of her place in the world. Wren must wrestle with what it means to save the thing you love most, even if victory requires you to let go of it in the end.

Though queer characters are openly accepted in this universe – and Tamsin, it turns out, has been interested in women well before Wren arrived on the scene – but the conflict between those with magic and those without feels uncomfortably familiar to the way that LGBT people can be sneered at or rejected in our world. (But, thankfully, it’s not hamfisted about it.)

Sweet & Bitter Magic is part of an important trend a genre that’s gotten increasingly more comfort with telling queer love stories, and it’s a standout entry in the recent slate of sapphic romances that have hit shelves in the past few months.

Sweet & Bitter Magic is available now. Let us know if you’ll be checking this one out!