Fun story

Enjoyed the story but the accents were painful so took me out of it. If you want someone to be English please just use an English voice actor.

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Fun story

Great story and funny at times. Really enjoyed it . Narration was excellent and loved her voice. Recommend

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charming

A very enjoyable lisen, a humorous and cosy story.
great characters, very much enjoyed.
definitely recommend.

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Sweet, gothic, weird, wonderful

Sweet, gothic, weird and wonderful. T. Kingfisher never disappoints. Never know where you'll end up in one of their books, but the journey is always worth it!

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Brilliantly silly

This is very Pratchett esq in the best way. You get intrigue, character, action and bread. A great way to imagine a wizarding world where creativity and determination is key. Definitely worth a listen.

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Narration was interesting....

Nice story, which kept me engaged. I did spend the first third trying to work out what accent the narrator had. It was very distracting. Her voice was vaguely annoying, but I stuck with it because I liked the story.

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1 person found this helpful

Charmingly Delightful

Low pressure fiction makes for a nice comfort read. Well written & well read by the performer

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So much fun!

I absolutely love the creativity in this book. I mean the title already gives a hint of what's inside. Such a wholesome story with carnivorous sourdough starters and mischievous gingerbread men.
Definitely Recommend for an autumn read.

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Engaging characters, bit slow to get going

This isn’t a deep book - it’s heroine is 14, and it’s told entirely from her perspective, but she’s an engaging young thing who ends up having to deal with far, far more than you should at that, or any, age. It takes a while to get going and some of the events that transpire are a tad obvious, and some I thought obvious didn’t happen, so what do I know?! The latter part did pick up pace and it then rattled along to a rather good conclusion.

However, I was surprised to hear it read in UK English, by an American narrator. The narration, and Mona, are read in a rather cut-glass RP (received pronunciation) that, to be fair, the narrator holds well, but to my UK-English ears it sounded a bit carefully over-annunciated. Others characters came from all over, a bit of Irish, a bit of Australian, a bit of generic-rustic-yokel (think Sam Gamgee in the LotR films), and sometimes it was all a bit of a blend. I didn’t get why Mona, raised from a young age by her aunt and uncle, spoke so differently to them, and far more like the ruling classes. Mona is a baker, an ordinary girl, and no one else from her family, or the others we meet that she knows, speak that way. I thought I’ d get used to it, but I didn’t, and it nagged at me all the way through.

I’m not a young adult, or even an older child, so I’m not the target audience here, and I’m not criticising the story - it’s good, the characters are utterly engaging, the lesson that grown ups can’t always fix things is well learnt, there’s a battle at the end that is rather bloodless (lots of whacking and hitting), and,

SPOILER

just in case these things bother you,

someone you get to know as the book progresses dies. And it’s sadly done.

But the accents annoyed me. I mean, American author, American narrator - why go England-English?

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3 people found this helpful

Loved it

Really good performance rof a really good book. I binge listened it. Definitely recommend

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