Review: Through Smoke and Sand by Corrie Hathaway

I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Lexi is an eighteen year old barista who has a compulsion to help people. If someone asks her for advice or help in their personal life she has to help, or she’ll suffer physically. Just before her nineteenth birthday, she is overwhelmed at work with a crowd of people who become a dangerous mob, following her through town to her home and trying to break in, unaware of the magic drive to have her fix their problems. Lexi is overwhelmed and begs for help, and to her surprise help comes in the form of Gussy, an elderly Fairy Godmother. She offers to bring Lexi to Spindle Peak, the home of the Godmothers, where she can learn to use her gifts and join their ranks. Lexi, being both impulsive and rebellious, says no thank you. Then changes her mind and has to earn her way into the Godmothers’ good graces.

Lexi’s lack of forethought and streak of bluntly spoken rebellion when confronted with rules causes loads of problems for the Godmothers, her roommate, her friendship with the mysterious Oliver, and for the people she’s supposed to be blessing with Fairy Godmother magic. She is very much an immature young adult who makes massive mistakes threatening the safety of the whole world, struggles with self-confidence and abandonment issues, and has to determine whether the gift she’s obligated to fulfill is also her calling.

I enjoyed the hell out of this book. It is a fast read, and Corrie Hathaway has created an excellent backdrop of magic adjacent to the mundane world. Lexi is a wonderfully troubled character, and her main antagonists, Wilhelmina and Sylvia, are perfect foils of order, rules, and maturity against Lexi’s utter mess of inexperience and young adult “know it all” attitude. I think I had similar arguments when I was about her age (although maybe not about Godmother strategies), so it was fun to watch her learn through the course of the story.

There were a few moments where Hathaway’s writing jarred me out of the story, but those moments were early on in the plot and smoothed out later. I was satisfied with the way things ended and cleverly set the stage for book two, which I hope is coming soon because I need to know what happens next in Lexi’s adventures. If you like fairy tales and appreciate the reluctant hero who makes frustratingly short-sighted decisions that complicate her own life, this book is for you.