Review: Magic for Liars

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book presents as (urban fantasy) noir: a private investigator, who drinks too much to cope with her loneliness and alienation, is given the opportunity to move up from adulterous spouses and work on an actual murder mystery, at the magical school where her estranged twin sister teaches.

She insists she's fine with the fact that her sister has magic and she doesn't. I spent some of the time nearly believing her, and I think she spent some of the time nearly believing herself. She's a deeply flawed and broken person who I absolutely wanted to succeed, even though that seemed highly unlikely.

There's some more tragic backstory of the kind that could happen in almost any family, which only makes it more effective; and there's a doomed romance with one of the other teachers. Doomed, because the PI tells herself that, for the sake of the investigation, she has to not reveal the fact that she has no magic... hence, I assume, the title, Magic for Liars.

It pulls off the feat of being adjacent to a classic YA story - there's a prophecy about a Chosen One, and all kinds of teen magic-school drama and angst - without that story taking over, or even being taken all that seriously most of the time.

There are some beautifully crafted phrases, like "It was like stealing candy from a big bowl of free candy surrounded by helpful multilingual signposts," or "the bags under my eyes were definitely well past the carry-on limit".

There are herrings of a deep red hue (which had me completely fooled); terrible and wonderful moments of powerful magic; deliberately incomprehensible jargon that the PI pretends to understand, and that imply a complex and deep magical world; poignant interpersonal and intrapersonal moments; and an ending that, somewhat contrary to the noir tradition, holds out some hope (without revealing the outcome of the hope one way or the other). It's powerful, and expertly done, which is why I bumped it up to five stars. It isn't the kind of book that naturally leads to a sequel, but I would certainly read another book by this author, especially if it took place in the same world.

The one significant criticism I have is that the pattern of "reluctant witness is about to finally give the PI a clue, someone interrupts" happens a bit too often.

I received a pre-publication copy from Netgalley for review.

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