I don't usually like middle-grade or young adult, but this book was absolutely adorable. Mona is a fourteen-year-old girl who is dragged semi-unwillingly into a conspiracy against the magickers of her city. Mona herself is a magicker, but the only thing she can magic is dough and baked goods. While she insists this isn't a "useful" skill, her talent continually comes to the rescue of herself and her friends. Neatly buried within the charming plot are some lovely meditations on the nature of power and the people who have (or do not have) it. 

Mona is a delightful narrator and sounds like a fourteen-year-old girl—not too childish, not too adult, navigating the confusing liminal space of early adolescence when everything is changing and in some ways you want it to change, but in other ways you want everything to stay the same. The supporting cast of characters is also delightful and easy to fall in love with. Everyone is easy to root for; you want everyone to win because they all worked so hard and deserve it for being generally good people. 

Throughout the book, Kingfisher comments on how unfair and unreasonable it is that a fourteen-year-old girl somehow becomes responsible for the fate of the city. This is generally my complaint with young adult books especially—I'm supposed to believe that the only viable candidate for herodom is sixteen? And that this sixteen-year-old has a developed enough prefontal cortex to handle the complex politics and strategizing of saving the world, universe, etc.? Mona's self-directed quest is primarily to find an adult who can solve this problem—a significantly more logical response for a child than assuming she can just save everyone all on her own. 

A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking is a delightful quick read that anyone who likes quirky, cozy stories will enjoy.