Friday 56 and Book Beginning: Sugar Spells (The Spellwork Syndicate #2) by Lola Dodge | Friday 50/50: Favorite/Least Favorite Black Cover Design

This is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice

These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.

3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.

4. Post it.

5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

Please join us over at RoseCityReader every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

Synopsis:

   After her run-in with a jealous warlock, apprentice baker Anise Wise can’t wait to get back the kitchen where she belongs. But thanks to her brush with death, the land of the living isn’t all cupcakes and marshmallows.

   Anise’s magical mojo is way out of whack and her evolving powers are stirring up trouble. As the town buzzes with news that Anise can bake deathly spells, unsavory characters start lining up for a taste. They’ll stop at nothing for the chance to use Anise and her witchcraft to further their own plots.

   She plans to hole up researching magic recipes until the attention dies down, but then she discovers the horrifying terms of her bodyguard’s contract. Wynn has saved her life so many times, she can’t leave him trapped. But doing the right thing will mean risking death or worse—being cast out of her dream job.

   For this witch, justice might not be as sweet as advertised.

Book Beginning:

The steady drip, drip, drip of brewing potion marked the passing seconds in my Great-Aunt Agatha's quiet library. Vanilla mixed with the scent of the old spellbooks crammed into floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, easily making this room my favorite place on earth. But even snuggled into a cozy armchair with a juicy book on witchcraft, I couldn't settle and relax.

56%:

"Forty-three?" I did the math- Fiona didn't look older than sixty. "You joined as a teenager?" She must have been some kind of prodigy.

"Darling." She gave me a demure mile with the hint of a satisfied cat's tail-twitch. "I'm already ninety and then some."

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50/50 Friday is a new weekly link-up hosted by Carrie @ The Butterfly Reader and Laura @ Blue Eye Books.  Every week they have a new topic featuring two sides of the same coin - you share a book that suits each category and link up on the hosts' blogs.

There's actually a lot of covers with a mostly black design that I love, so picking one that I don't like is going to be hard.

Favorite

So many that I like, it was really hard choosing "favorite". I struggled with being invested in this book, but I'm willing to give it another go. I might have just not been in the right head space when I first read the book.

Not so much

I just don't really care for this version of the book. While I do typically like simplistic covers with just text, this one, is kind of distracting for being "simplistic"