Interview & Review+Giveaway: The Gingerbread Curse by April Marcom

Review of fairy-tale fantasy The Gingerbread Curse, plus an interview with April Marcom

All her life, Falon’s grandfather told her the age-old tale of ‘The Gingerbread Man’. Even as a teenager, she’d fallen asleep to his favorite bedtime story, a special tradition she knew she’d never outgrow.  However, when he makes a dying wish, asking her to visit a secret underground world of magic to rescue the best friend he left behind fifty years ago, the tale begins to come to life.

Setting out with her self-obsessed cousin and a cure for the magicked man with skin like gingerbread, she finds herself tangled within an adventure nothing like the story her grandfather always told.

Once having found the long lost man of her grandfather’s youth, her only hope of ever returning home, or even surviving his world, lies in the talons of a deadly hybrid she scarcely trusts. Together they must face the animals taken from the children’s tale and magicked into monsters, a man who can move mountains who is bent on killing them all, and a labyrinth rumored to have never allowed a survivor.

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Excerpt from The Gingerbread Curse

Hidden within the Evanish Mountains, there is a crevice that leads to an unknown world deep within our earth, where magic bleeds through the ground, transforming whatever it touches.

Over time, a great many wanderers have fallen into the enormous underground world, drawn in by its magic and turned into beings who look like they could have been made from gingerbread. The only way to escape is to face a maze filled with monsters and peril nearly impossible to survive.

Men have become lost until time consumed them. Others were destroyed and eaten by horses, by pigs, by oxen, or by whatever creature was unlucky enough to be touched by the magic of this underworld. It affects every sort of animal differently, but all are transfixed by the maze to crave the taste of the magicked man. The wind, as prey cuts through it, seems to chant:

“Run, run as fast as you can.

The moment you stop, you’re a dead man.”

None are worse than the vixens, however, a cache of female foxes with unparalleled speed and teeth that can cut through anything like butter.

Only a few have ever made it past them. The rare escapee is where the age-old tale of “The Gingerbread Man” originated, told differently from mouth to mouth. Not to mention that each “gingerbread man’s” tale is different.

Buy The Gingerbread Curse

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My Review of The Gingerbread Curse

I’m always up for a creative take on fairy tales, and this grabbed my interest. The gingerbread angle was very cool. I’m not sure I fully understood all the mechanics of the world, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It felt like there could be a book/series set primarily in the gingerbread world to flesh out all the cool things there. Not to mention the dangerous ones—yikes.

The character growth was great, and I even felt a little bad for the villains. The romance seemed a bit fast, and the logistics struck me as a bit odd. I never judge a couple. You love who you love, and no one knows that better than me. Just I felt like I missed something about the romantic interest’s background. Not a dealbreaker by any means.

Long story short, I recommend this to fans of YA fantasy, fairy tales, and neat fantasy worlds. Definitely worth a read.

An Interview with April Marcom

-What inspired you to become a writer?

I’ve always loved writing, bending the will of words to become whatever I decide. What made me want to pursue it as a career was my children. We all love books and I wanted something I could do from home. There’s hardly an hour that passes by now that I’m not forward to sitting down to work on my next book.

-If you could visit your book’s world for a day, what one thing would you do?

I think I’d be hung up trying to decide whether or not to drink from the pool of immortality in THE GINGERBREAD CURSE. On one hand, I’d probably be on Aurora’s side. It’s immortality! What else do you need to know? But on the other hand, the Falon side of me would probably tell me to slow down and think about it.

Nope, I’d go with Aurora and drink it so I could live forever!

-It’s two in the morning. What does your protagonist reveal in confidence? (Don’t worry, we won’t tell.)

It could go two ways. Either Falon would admit to having part of her dad inside her, the part that drove him to abandon all responsibility years ago. Of course Falon would never do that; she only inherited these brief, fleeting urges. The other possibility of what she might admit is how much she blames her dad for her grandfather’s death, only because deep down she imagines his life would have been longer without the heartbreak of his son deserting his family for a life of selfishness.

-Which of your characters would you go out for drinks with?

Sierra, for sure. The story doesn’t give much of a backstory on who she was before she fell underground and seized control of her own magical island. I’d love to know how far her powers can go, too.

-You’re in a tavern, and a dwarf challenges you to a duel. What do you do?

Generally, whenever anything scary comes up for real or even hypothetically, I call out, “Big Jooosh!”. He’s my husband and hero. Feels like I’m always safe when he’s close by, so hopefully I’d be smart enough to have him along in the tavern to help me out with the dwarf.

-Is there a genre you could never write? Which and why?

That would be horror. I HATE being afraid. Even scary movies are too much for me. I’d probably give myself nightmares if I tried writing in that genre. Erotica’s not my thing either.

About April Marcom

April Marcom works as a Pre-K teacher’s assistant, but her true passion is writing. When she’s not teaching or creating stories, she’s enjoying the country life with her car-obsessed husband and three fabulous children. She also enjoys rainy days, traveling, and her very rowdy dogs. April grew up a southern bell in Mississippi, but is now a proud Oklahoman.

Find her online:

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Giveaway

April Marcom will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway