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A review by sbbarnes
Magic, Lies, and Deadly Pies by Misha Popp
3.0
Magic, Lies and Deadly Pies follows main character Daisy, who makes a living selling pies out of her food truck. She has two notable side jobs also involving pie, namely providing a local diner with pies and killing abusive men with magical pies that are only poisonous to them. The plot follows her nearly being discovered as a murderess and trying to save herself, while also competing in a pie-baking contest.
On the whole, I enjoyed the read well enough while I wasn't thinking too hard, the writing is pleasant and easy to follow and Daisy was an interesting character to be in the mind of. However, by the end, I was struggling with two issues. Mild spoilers ahead.
The first is that there is just a lot going on in this book. There's Daisy's background, her parents and how she got her magic pie powers, which is uncovered bit by bit. Then there's her everyday life at the diner, where she has adopted something of a found family; there's the murder plotline, the pie contest plotline and then there's the question of Daisy's love interest, which is split between two other characters. Some of these plots interlink, which helps, but on the whole, I wished it was a lot longer to really give these aspects some depth. Ultimately I didn't get much of an impression of her relationships at the diner, for instance, even though they were supposed to be pretty important to her.
The second is the cognitive dissonance of the whole restorative-justice-through-murder-pie thing. There are no two ways around it; the main character murders several people. Several times in the book it is mentioned that there's a kind of cop-out on whether or not the pie will actually kill the man in question, which is something, but it never actually happens during the book. I kept waiting for some sort of comeuppance for how morally grey the main character ultimately is, but there was none except some vague reference to Daisy struggling with it herself in the past. In my opinion, it would have been a stronger story if she either embraced her own moral ambiguity more strongly, or if she experienced real consequences for it.
On the whole, I enjoyed the read well enough while I wasn't thinking too hard, the writing is pleasant and easy to follow and Daisy was an interesting character to be in the mind of. However, by the end, I was struggling with two issues. Mild spoilers ahead.
The first is that there is just a lot going on in this book. There's Daisy's background, her parents and how she got her magic pie powers, which is uncovered bit by bit. Then there's her everyday life at the diner, where she has adopted something of a found family; there's the murder plotline, the pie contest plotline and then there's the question of Daisy's love interest, which is split between two other characters. Some of these plots interlink, which helps, but on the whole, I wished it was a lot longer to really give these aspects some depth. Ultimately I didn't get much of an impression of her relationships at the diner, for instance, even though they were supposed to be pretty important to her.
The second is the cognitive dissonance of the whole restorative-justice-through-murder-pie thing. There are no two ways around it; the main character murders several people. Several times in the book it is mentioned that there's a kind of cop-out on whether or not the pie will actually kill the man in question, which is something, but it never actually happens during the book. I kept waiting for some sort of comeuppance for how morally grey the main character ultimately is, but there was none except some vague reference to Daisy struggling with it herself in the past. In my opinion, it would have been a stronger story if she either embraced her own moral ambiguity more strongly, or if she experienced real consequences for it.