A review by adrianoreads
My Name Is Magic by Xan van Rooyen
5.0
Taika has no magic! Even though their parents and brother do, even though they goes to a school for those with magic, even though their name means magic, they have none. When their friend goes missing even the lack of magic won’t stop them from finding out what happened to their missing friend.
I have been dying to read this book and when I saw a post offering the possibility of reading an ARC, I jumped at the chance. Surprisingly I received an E-ARC and I was ecstatic! I truly enjoyed this book. Taika’s character development throughout the story was not forced, it was organic and it was believable. They grew to accept that they didn’t need magic to be a complete person. The fact the they were non-binary was something that was a struggle Taika handled very much internally which at least in my experience was how I also handle my journey to becoming my truest self. I think the self condemnation was accurate as to what I went through and thoughts that I had which made me connect with them on a deeper level. I like that the romance was just a sprinkle and wasn’t a major plot point.
Now I will say, there are a lot of Finnish words, which makes sense since its based on Finnish mythology, and I had to have my phone ready to Google for pronunciation and I found myself re-reading passages to get me back into the story when I had to look them up.
All in all I was not disappointed at all with this book after a great deal of anticipation, in fact it was even better than I expected.
I have been dying to read this book and when I saw a post offering the possibility of reading an ARC, I jumped at the chance. Surprisingly I received an E-ARC and I was ecstatic! I truly enjoyed this book. Taika’s character development throughout the story was not forced, it was organic and it was believable. They grew to accept that they didn’t need magic to be a complete person. The fact the they were non-binary was something that was a struggle Taika handled very much internally which at least in my experience was how I also handle my journey to becoming my truest self. I think the self condemnation was accurate as to what I went through and thoughts that I had which made me connect with them on a deeper level. I like that the romance was just a sprinkle and wasn’t a major plot point.
Now I will say, there are a lot of Finnish words, which makes sense since its based on Finnish mythology, and I had to have my phone ready to Google for pronunciation and I found myself re-reading passages to get me back into the story when I had to look them up.
All in all I was not disappointed at all with this book after a great deal of anticipation, in fact it was even better than I expected.