A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic

A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic (Adanashire #1)- J. Penner

Poisoned Pen Books

Release Date: April 15, 2025

Rating: 📚📚📚 (3.5)

Synopsis: In the heart of Adenashire, where elfish enchantments and dwarven delights rule, Arleta Starstone, a human confectionist works twice as hard perfecting her unique blend of baking and apothecary herbs.

So when an orc neighbor secretly enters her creations into the prestigious Elven Baking Battle, Arleta faces a dilemma.

Being magicless, her participation in the competition could draw more scowls than smiles. And if Arleta wants to prove her talent and establish her culinary reputation, this human will need more than just her pastry craft to sweeten the odds.

While competing, she'll set off on a journey of mouthwatering pastries, self-discovery, heartwarming friendships and romance, while questioning whether winning the Baking Battle is the true prize.

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In a world where just about everyone has magic, human baker Arleta Starstone works twice as hard as everyone else to try and keep up. An orphan since 16, she keeps her emotional walls high and accepts help from no one, usually including her friends and neighbors the orcs who took care of her after her parents died. She's determined to make it on her own, seeing it as emotionally safer. When her neighbors enter her in the annual Baking Battle Arleta isn't sure she should accept. Magicless people aren't welcome and it probably won't come to anything. Why risk it? But Theo, the elf who delivers her invitation, encourages her to accept as well and Arleta decides to take the chance. It's a whole new world for her, with new experiences, new friends, and the chance for romance as well as winning the Baking Battle- if Arleta is willing to be brave.

Hands down the best parts of Fellowship were when it focused on the baking. Arleta clearly loves baking (the author too I think!) and without going into deep descriptions that send the reader off topic we get the sights and scents of home baked goods and showstopping cakes that make you want to run down to the kitchen and start baking too! 

Fellowship is a small, cozy world with lots to unpack and the author lets you do the unpacking yourself. Arleta and Theo travel together and have some equally delightful forced proximity/kindness to others on the road moments. The prejudice between some races (elves against everyone else and everyone against humans) shows this is not a perfect world, but there are plenty of secondary characters who show that this prejudice is not something everyone approves of. We could see more of that social change in future books in the series. Secondary characters like Doli and Jez (Jez especially) were fun and brought extra depth and personality to the story. Arleta had a lot of growing to do over the book and she had a tough time doing it. But I think she's someone we can all relate to- someone who has such a set idea about herself in her head that it is tough to accept all the evidence that something else, something positive, could be true instead. 

I'll definitely be on the lookout for more books in this series when they come out. A fast and fun read that should make you smile, A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic is best read with a hot cup of your favorite drink by your side, and some scones or cookies to help when the food cravings hit. Be sure to check out the recipes at the end!

I received a DRC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

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Rebel Romanov

The Rebel Romanov: Julie of Saxe-Coburg, the Empress Russia Never Had- Helen Rappaprt

St. Martin's Press

Release Date: April 15, 2025

Rating: 📚📚📚

Synopsis: In 1795, Catherine the Great of Russia was in search of a bride for her grandson Constantine, who stood third in line to her throne. In an eerie echo of her own story, Catherine selected an innocent young German princess, Julie of Saxe-Coburg, aunt of the future Queen Victoria. Though Julie had everything a young bride could wish for, she was alone in a court dominated by an aging empress and riven with rivalries, plotting, and gossip―not to mention her brute of a husband, who was tender one moment and violent the next. She longed to leave Russia and her disastrous marriage, but her family in Germany refused to allow her to do so.

Desperate for love, Julie allegedly sought consolation in the arms of others. Finally, Tsar Alexander granted her permission to leave in 1801, even though her husband was now heir to the throne. Rootless in Europe, Julie gave birth to two―possibly three―illegitimate children, all of whom she was forced to give up for adoption. Despite entreaties from Constantine to return and provide an heir, she refused, eventually finding love with her own married physician.

At a time when many royal brides meekly submitted to disastrous marriages, Julie proved to be a woman ahead of her time, sacrificing her reputation and a life of luxury in exchange for the freedom to live as she wished. The Rebel Romanov is the inspiring tale of a bold woman who, until now, has been ignored by history.

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There are a lot of names throughout the history of the 1800s that we know- even if you aren't really a history person. Catherine the Great, Queen Victoria, Napoleon. Julie of Saxe-Coburg isn't a woman whose name jumps to mind, but, as Helen Rappaport's most recent biography proves, she was certainly a part of the power family circles of the times. After trying to live the life others dictated for her, Julie seems to have balanced political necessity with a personal desire to live a quiet life- rebelling against all expectations for her rather successfully.

The older sister of Leopold (who would marry Princess Charlotte of England and later become King of Belgium) and Victoire (who later became Queen Victoria's mother), Julie was one of the daughters of an ambitious but poor Saxe-Coburg noble house. When Catherine the Great was shopping for a German bride for her grandson Constantine, Julie ended up the winner-or loser. While she got on well with Catherine, her brother-in-law Alexander and his wife Elise (another German bride), Constantine was an abusive man, obsessed with the military and overall not someone you'd want to be married to.  By the time Alexander became tsar Julie had had enough and asked permission from her brother-in-law to leave Russia (and Constantine) permanently. 

She was always known as a "Russian grand duchess" and was frequently an unofficial envoy for Russia, but Julie never returned to Russia- despite her parents and siblings disagreeing with her leaving her husband. Whether she told any of them at the time the full truth behind her reasons for leaving him or not isn't clear, though in her journals her mother frequently laments at Julie's miserable existence, so she must have known something. Society as a whole never knew exactly what to do with Julie- she was a Russian grand duchess so they wanted to make a big deal out of that, but she was a woman separated (and eventually divorced) from her husband and they all frowned on that. 

As interesting as reading about Julie in the book was, it was also frustrating. She's an elusive woman and impossible to feel like you get to know. Rappaport quotes from letters and journals of others about her, you see her through the eyes of people who liked her, admired her, or disliked her based on what she could do for them. But Julie's own letters and journals seem to have completely been destroyed- exactly because she was so close the Romanov family and was such a rebellious person. She knew things the family didn't want talked about, her very existence outside of Russia seems to have been a problem even when they used it as an advantage. Covering up the kind of individual, semi-free life she wanted to lead (even from her neice Victoria) seems to have been somthing the men in the family especially tried to do as she got older. Finding any words she herself wrote, let alone a personal thought she had, are now all but impossible. Meaning by the end of The Rebel Romanov, I wasn't sure I knew Julie as a person any more than when I started the book. I knew about her. I knew about some of the tragedies of the life she had lived and how she had been strong enough to move forward against immense social and sometimes familial pressure to do the opposite. I would love to have known the woman behind the public mask she wore. I expect she was strong and stubborn in a lot of ways. And I think history has a lot more women like her than we know about. We just haven't discovered their voices yet.  But Julie meets several other divorced or separated women and gives us hints at the lives they were leading- so maybe we just need to start following those hints.

I received a DRC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

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