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The Lies We Conjure, by Sarah Henning

Review copy provided by the publisher.

I’m usually not the person for comp titles. In fact I usually hate comp titles–I find they’re often of the model “thing you like meets thing you found super-boring, phrased in a way that makes it impossible to tell what elements they might be drawing on!” Yaaaay. But the comp for this book was “Knives Out with magic,” and it is basically exactly that, yep, that’s what we’ve got here, we’ve got Knives Out with magic.

Ruby and Wren really need money for college, so when they’re offered a few thousand each to play a rich lady’s granddaughters at a dinner party, it seems like a no-brainer. Stick close to her, make small talk, how hard can it be? When one of their fellow diners dies, their erstwhile grandmother disappears, and the people around them start doing actual magic, they find out exactly how hard. But it’s too late: they’re magically locked into this gorgeous estate with a bunch of scared, angry witches who think they’re the scions of a death magic house, and the main way out is to solve the murder, lest they be trapped forever–or just plain killed.

The other teenage heirs to magical lineages have a great many reasons to suspect each other of nefarious deeds–their elders are certainly getting up to enough. So Ruby and Wren have to figure out who they can trust among the impeccably dressed, super-privileged, immensely powerful young witches–because going it alone is definitely not an option.

So yeah, Knives Out with magic, basically exactly the same kind of beautiful clothes and setting but eat the rich story as Knives Out, fish out of water characters combined with the ones who absolutely assume they belong there. Lots of yelling and running around in search of clues and catching feels for all the wrong people. A novel for the ages, probably not. A fun romp for right now, yeah, absolutely.

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