A Magic Steeped in Poison

This book is the perfect example of why you greatly benefit from an amazing cover as an author looking to find an audience and trying to attract attention. 100%. It's colourful and whimsical and I just love it.
Sadly, the story itself did not deliver.

Ning live in a country where tea is magic. You can use it to do a wide variety of things, if you have the talent. Her mother used to do that, but then she died of poisoning, while Shu, Ning's sister is also dying. So our protagonist goes to the capital, to take part in a tea competition organised by the royal court to be able to save her sister.

There are so many elements to this. The royal court, political unrest, the tea magic, all the different competitors with their own agenda, the shady history of Ning's parents. A princess. A handsome boy as a love interest, but also with his own issues.
And it all just doesn't blend well. We are being told there are those things and they all matter, but somehow the writing doesn't do much with them and it all just comes off as unnecessarily complicated and also barebones at the same time. I have no idea how that is possible, but it is. It wasn't serious enough, nor whimsical enough. Stuck somewhere in between that greatly limits it.
It almost felt like we wasted a bunch of time on details. Describing hair styles, foods (which I like, I'm a foodie, both eating and cooking, but still), rooms. It wouldn't have been THAT much of an issue in a beefier book, but this isn't one. It's also a duology, which is weird when you are trying to have so many things going. Something will be ignored, I am sure about it and that's a shame.

There are also many names of people and places introduces at the same time. Ning leaves her home that has a very limited setting and cast of characters early in the story. Of course the royal court will have more people, but again, this is a short book and yet we get thrown a million people at us and I don't even think many of them matter all that much. It's just... “suspicious backstabber No.3” and that's it, they don't interact with the protagonist much, they just form a crowd. But in that case, will I remember which has what hair style? Not really, no.
It's a bit better with the nice characters, thought I didn't connect with them much either. There was one, Lian, who had some potential, but even that got sidelined real quick.
Now the love, interest, Kang... Eh. Typical handsome boy with a dark and difficult past who develops an instant connecting with the main character. As much as we are kiiiinda made to believe he can be shady, it's never realised properly. You just know he is a nice boy. It's so obvious.

The prose is first person, present tense, which I personally dislike. Some of you probably enjoy it, but I don't, so there is that.
All in all, the writing adds to my feelings about this book; I don't think it's the worse written thing ever, but it's lacking something that would actually make it great. It's a first novel, so probably the experience is missing, which is fine, it can be solved in time, but in its current form, I don't think this is really that good.

Now... I am not to claim a hard magic system is needed. Some people do it well, some don't, I can be perfectly content with something working just because magic is unknowable. But here it felt almost like the magic was just a convenient tool to push the plot forward, without us having an understanding of it.
The challenges in the magic tea competition were all underwhelming. We didn't see any form of amazing feat using it. One of them, the one involving a bird, could have been interesting, but they felt like afterthoughts in a story about political intrigue and lovers. From how this ended, the second book will be more about that, so I hope for the communication between Ning and Kang will be better, because... sheesh, it is one of those where we are supposed to see clever plots, but the characters just forget to freaking talk to each other properly.

I didn't love it. I didn't HATE it, I just felt like almost every element was lackluster. Not enough well-developed magic, not a substantial enough love story, not clever enough political things. Maybe I got spoilt by many different books my more experiences authors with skillsets that COULD handle all the things. Dunno.

But I will read book 2, I think. It's coming soon too.