A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher... finding yourself and your place in the world.

I loved that book. It's a fun one.

Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, in my opinion her best kid's book and her best book. Funny, tragic, and it doesn't go where you expect. The characters are truly vulnerable.

I'll add A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking here both because I feel like it doesn't get enough love on this sub AND I think the chatty tone of the narrator is close to what OP is looking for.

the all GoH panel at 17:30 section mostly concerns the twisting path A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking took to getting published.

But strong characters, leans young, and Bob? I'm in.

I read this at the end of May and loved it so much.

I loved this book. One of the things I like is how it starts small and builds. We have an assistant in a baker's shop with a weird minor magical power focussing on the mundane things happening around her, who gets drawn into the bigger events of the wider world and discovers ways of using her power which turn out to be pretty major.

I loved this book. Well written, not afraid to say "I don't know" on weird questions the reader might have ("where did the gingerbread men get their dance?" Good protagonist, excellent and unexpected characters, fantastic world building, interesting exploration of the magic and the way it works.