Goodreads Synopsis:
Adèle has only one goal: catch the purple-haired thief who broke into her home and stole her exocore, thus proving herself to her new police team. Little does she know, her thief is also the local baker.
Claire owns the Croissant-toi, but while her days are filled with pastries and customers, her nights are dedicated to stealing exocores. These new red gems are heralded as the energy of the future, but she knows the truth: they are made of witches’ souls.
When her twin—a powerful witch and prime exocore material—disappears, Claire redoubles in her efforts to investigate. She keeps running into Adèle, however, and whether or not she can save her sister might depend on their conflicted, unstable, but deepening relationship.
Review:
So because I can never stick to my “to read” plans, I deviated from the list I made at the start of the month and chose this book as it meant I was still sticking with my “Queer books for Pride” theme. I picked this up a while ago because I will almost auto-buy any SFF with Asexual characters (Adèle is Biromantic Demisexual) and was super excited to read it. Also, the cover is just absolutely beautiful – I probably would have bought it for that alone if I didn’t know about the awesome representation in the book.
The main character of the book is Claire, also known as Claude, is a genderfluid aromantic baker. Adèle is a police officer who has just moved to the city after having to leave her last team for investigating things people wanted to stay secret. The book starts with Claire breaking into Adèle’s new home to steal her exocore and from there the plot focuses on Claire’s attempts at discovering who is behind the exocores while Adèle focuses on hunting down the mysterious thief.
The best part of this book is definitely the characters, both Adèle and Claire are very well written and you could put them in any situation and I’d enjoy reading about it – the fact that they tend to end up in pretty interesting ones is just a bonus. The side characters are also all very well written and I loved them all (at least, the good ones).
This is set in a very obviously French setting, and the characters themselves speak French (written in English for us readers, but there’s little snippets of French in there such as the cute phrase Adèle and Claire say to each other). The author is from Québec and as I’ve never been, I’m unsure how much is based on there but I personally got a very strong Parisian vibe from it, especially the bridge which reminded me a lot of the many beautiful bridges across the Seine.
I was originally going to describe this as a perfect short read, but turns out it’s actually 400 pages! I was reading it on my Kindle and was so engrossed I didn’t notice the length of it.
This is a book I would highly recommend, especially if you’re looking to read more Queer books for Pride month. Be warned though, it will give you huge cravings for delicious French pastries!
BrenhinesBooks 