A review by misterintensity
Spellhacker by M.K. England

3.0

During their last job, Diz and her friends accidently siphoned something they weren’t supposed to. Now MMC, the leading corporation, wants them dead. Now on the run, can they expose the role MMC played in creating the spell plague which took so many lives, including their parents’? The backstory of a spell plague taking the lives of a large portion of the adult population of Kyrkarta, leaving many orphans and decimating the economy, is intriguing. However, there’s a lot of setup before the group goes on the run. The story is from Diz’s point of view but while she isn’t an unreliable narrator, she is so in her own head that she often doesn’t notice how others react to her. She pines for Remi and it’s obvious to everyone but her that they reciprocate. Some readers may get frustrated with her angst. The story takes too long to get started, with no real sense of danger until the last third of the book. Getting to the action faster would have improved the book tremendously. Still with its appealing characters, intriguing premise, and lots of thrills once the story gets started, fans of thrilling LGBTQIA books like We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia, Not Your Sidekick by C. B. Lee, and of course The Disasters will like this book.

Thanks to Edelweiss+ for providing an ARC for this book.