After putting this down, I was really conflicted over whether I really liked the book or not. On the one hand, as I was reading it, I got swept up in the story, had trouble putting it down, and really wanted to keep reading. But, once I finished the book, I was left unsatisfied and a bit disappointed. There were a number of things that were flawed:

The characterizations were very weak and vague. While the family antics amused me (Oh boy, talk about dysfunctional!), none of the characters, not even the narrator was fleshed out enough for me to feel an emotional attachment. Of the siblings, if Hoffman hadn't used their names I probably wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. Nor did we fully get to meet anyone outside the family. Claire and July were supposedly large and important parts of Gyp's life, but they were barely there and personality-less. We didn't even learn much about Ian other than he was a nice guy.

The rushed ending. Gyp figured out how to control her magic, and book ended. The end. What? Wait. It's only been a week, if that! Really needed more for me to feel real resolution.

Magic was too casually acceptance by those outside the family. After Gyp outs herself with Ian, and later with Claire, neither of them freaked out, asked a billion questions, or did anything but accept that she can curse things. Completely unrealistic, even with both's experiences with the occult, given that neither of them were particularly gifted themselves or had knowingly seen real magic before.

But what really bothered me throughout the book and made me not like it was the implication that if you had power, you could do whatever you wanted to anyone who had less power or no power -- with little or no consequence. The old adage that power corrupts is shown throughout the book. The LaZelles manipulated those around them, their surroundings, and even themselves however they saw fit, and did not question their right. As the normal sibling, Gyp was subjected to magical manipulation of her thoughts, feelings, wants, desires, actions, and even her own shape -- all without a second thought by the rest of her family. It was considered their right to spell her... because they could. Why else would her (horrible, horrible) mother never step in to police her children's use of power? Or try and protect Gyp from being made into a guinea pig? And her mother was the worst of the lot, creating compulsions for her children to never leave home, spelling her daughter so she would exercise and diet relentlessly, structuring their life to fit her idea of how it should be. She was abusive without ever having to lift a hand towards her children.

And when Gyp comes into her own power, she proves herself above this unthinkingly cruel way of being. She doesn't want to hurt people and tries desperately to try and harness her power benignly. So what does being this goodhearted persona get her? The role of walking doormat. She accommodates everyone automatically. She was so nice and sweet, she put up with everyone spelling her, manipulating her, and using her. And she STILL cheerfully cooks dinner half the week and spends an entire day making them cookies. But I have to wonder how much of that is her true personality and how much of that is having lived for two decades under the subtle control of her more powerful family members? She hated not being herself when she's cursed with Ultimate Fashion Sense - yet does she even know who she really is? She never stood up for herself; she let herself be talked into working on a day she had called in sick, she lets herself be pulled along by Altria, though she tries and controls the outcomes. THAT was the reason why I didn't connect with Gyp - I could never see myself acting so passively.

Though all the descriptions of food made me really want to make cookies and brownies. ( )

This was the most engrossing creepy wish fulfillment fantasy I've read in a while. Gypsum is the one untalented sibling in a family of people capable of magic. There's no magical boarding school and kids do to each other the nasty things that kids do to each other, but even more so. It's the story of her finding her power and trying to find herself, the usual YA stuff, but I found it hard to put down and gorged on it in only a few days. ( )

In a family of magic users, Gypsum is the odd girl out -- or is she? When Gyp's powers arrive, they are different than those of her siblings -- but does that mean that her powers are evil? I found this book fun, if a little chaotic. I like stories of big, eccentric families, and fantasy books about magic users discovering their abilities, and books set during the Christmas season that involve a lot of baking, and this was all of those things. I'm still not sure what the title or the cover has to do with the actual story, so don't judge the book by those! ( )

One of my favourites books in the whole world. It's about a girl who lives in a family with magical powers, she grows up expecting to get them too but instead "The Change" never arrives for her and she is normal within people who aren't and at the same time is pretty different from other normal people... Only, after years of wishing for magic of her own, The Change comes, in a way, only it's way too late to be a normal Change... [return][return]AFoS was love at first sight for me, the overweight and bookish protagonist with an appreciation for good food who's the ugly duckling of a magical family and has to made to with being "normal", that's it, with something that is, for her with her upbringing, basically a disability (even if her father and other people outside the family are also that way it does not feel that way to them, who never expected to go through transition and get a gift). This is my favourite novel ever, there's fanfic I love more but literature wise? I don't think anything can compete, not necessarily because it's better than "The Time Traveller's Wife" or "Hallucinating Foucault" but because it fits *me*. ( )

Odd cover, actually. Most of the story reads like a particularly compelling original fairy-tale or a smart paranormal YA. More fun, less mystical, than the cover implies.

At the same time it's a satisfying and rich read. I love that Gypsum (and her family) have to work very hard to figure out how to deal with her gift. It's not just 'oh, so now I can do this, but I have to be careful of that' and voila. It's complicated - as of course real magic in the real world would be.

And every character is fleshed out, too. It would be cool if there were a dozen books, one for each member of the family, and for a couple of the other friends, too. I'm not surprised to see that this is listed here on GR as LaZelle #1" even though it's perfectly satisfactory as a stand-alone. Even though I'm not a fan of series, I will be looking for more LaZelle stories, and anything else by Hoffman.

" ( )