Small Miracles

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Small Miracles captures the reader's attention with its engaging writing style and witty humor. I especially enjoyed the author's writing style, which is easy to read and captivating throughout the book. Atwater has a talent for creating vibrant, likable characters who are easy to root for and who draw the reader into their world. I also loved the footnotes and the humour within them; it takes a good author to do these well and Atwater does homage to Pratchett (Jay Kristoff did quite well in Nevernight) in pulling these off. I must admit to some muffled laughter and nose snorting giggles on the morning commute whilst reading them. I think my favourite one was… a b Hamilton, Jenny (July 26, 2022). "How to (Not) Fit In: The Misfit Heroine and Olivia Atwater's". Tor.com. Archived from the original on August 18, 2022 . Retrieved March 2, 2023. Since this is an SPFBO 8 finalist (updated: This won the competition) I decided to give it a go, even though contemporary rom-com fantasy isn't my favourite genre. Holly’s gruff niece Ella was also a fabulous character, and her teenaged life at school provided more exceptional opportunities for character development for all three: Gadriel, Holly, and Ella. Both Holly and Ella are dealing with emotional and psychological pain, and the bond between the three becomes one of catharsis and healing, in unintended ways for all of them.

In 1990, two iconic fantasy authors, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, collaborated to write the famed novel “Good Omens” (full title: “Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch”. Whimsy and satire is employed in highly effective fashion by Atwater to convey some fairly stark and challenging themes in the book. Love, loss, grief, death, forgiveness, redemption, family. Atwater shows a very deft hand in handling these issues. Half a Soul was about the evils of too much politeness and not enough kindness… so readers who find that lesson resonates with them might think for a moment about what subjects they’ve been politely evading lately. Small Miracles is about the secret wonder of mundane, everyday things—so I hope readers come away from it with a new appreciation for the small things which make them happy. I have provided an honest review of this book –“Small Miracles” by author Olivia Atwater – below for purposes of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) Number 8 competition, in which this book is one of ten finalists. Before We Go Blog (where I am one of the judges) is assigned the book, along with the other 9 judging blogs, to help determine which one of 10 books will emerge as the SPFBO 8 Champion.

FBC Info

The plot of the novel appears simple and fun, at first glance. Described as eminently unremarkable and plain-looking, Gadriel, the chocolate-loving, gambling-addicted main character, is the Fallen Angel of Petty Temptations. But he/she has “fallen” more over policy violations than any real horrific sin. If you want to recapture the feeling of someone reading a faerie tale to you when you were young, but you also want to read stories which challenge you a bit and make you think… that’s what I think Intisar’s books manage to do. They’re just beautiful.

The second category of footnotes provide a running score update to quantify Gadriel’s successes and failures in de-miserifying Holly’s excessively virtuous existence. For example “+10 Points of Virtue (Holly Harker): Rescuing a Lost Kitten.” One can’t help feeling that Atwater must have had an excel spreadsheet open alongside the manuscript document as the precise accounting of these numbers is both the substance of Gadriel’s challenge and an important plot-point as the story approaches its denouement.

When I first came up with the idea of Half a Soul , all I knew was that my main character had lost half of her soul, and that this caused her to be far less socially adept. I asked myself how best to set up a conflict around this, and obviously the Regency era seemed like the worst possible time period to be a woman who can’t read social cues. The Regency genre is also similar to classical faerie tales in many respects, with several Cinderella elements to it, so it made for a nice parallel. As soon as I’d decided on the Regency era, I bothered all of my old historical friends and found myself someone with a Regency thesis to consult—and then, the first book basically wrote itself! Waite, Olivia (June 26, 2022). "Happy Marriages, Petty Temptations and Angel Sex". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 5, 2022 . Retrieved March 3, 2023.

I have provided an honest review of this book – “Small Miracles” by author Olivia Atwater – below for purposes of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO) Number 8 competition, in which this book is one of ten finalists. Before We Go Blog (where I am one of the judges) is assigned the book, along with the other 9 judging blogs, to help determine which one of 10 books will emerge as the SPFBO 8 Champion.

I’ve often described the plot of Small Miracles as ‘genderfluid angels and demons argue over chocolate’. Obviously, there’s more to it than that—there’s commentary on the nature of love and grief, lots of dramatic irony, and copious amounts of footnotes. In many respects, Small Miracles is an homage to Good Omens , but I wanted it to be a story about small-scale, personal catastrophes rather than world-ending ones. If Good Omens was a rom-com and put less emphasis on David Tennant and… I mean Aziraphale and Crowley, it would be close to Small Miracles. Or the other way round. I guess one is better than the other? Perhaps? Gaiman and Pratchett vs Olivia Atwater? This was not supposed to be a difficult choice. There are many favourite parts of the book I could list, but one of them is the casual treatment of gender fluidity and queerness. As Steve Jobs would have said, It Just Works; effortless, unforced, and wonderful. I admit, Small Miracles was one of the books in our batch that instantly caught my attention. When I reached the “fallen angel” part in the blurb, I was sold. Mentioning angels is a sure way to perk up my attention. I’ve never read Olivia Atwater‘s books before, although I’ve heard a lot about Half a Soul and intended to read it at some point. I read (or listened to, actually) this as one of the SPFBO8 finalists, and while giving all titles a fair shot, I'm not going to pretend that this one won me over. I thought it was absolutely terrible, but that big caveat is there to say that this is absolutely not to sort of book I would ever read under my own steam (hence no rating), so there's every chance that if you like this sort of thing, it will at least work for you. I count myself amongst the fortunate to have discovered Olivia Atwater's work a few short years ago and she remains with each new tale, one of my favorite modern authors. Whether the story is framed in darkness or light, her signature whimsical tone never allows it to drift too far into either direction. The narrative is always fun, even when danger is at hand.

Yet, true to her advanced sin metrics, Holly proves remarkably incorruptible, despite Gadriel’s initial efforts to inveigle Holly to live a little, and treat herself to some of the better things life has to offer. So Gadriel is forced to up his/her game, and use small miracles to achieve his/her ends. Oh, goodness, you had to make me choose. Well, I think Gadriel is probably my favourite character. Gadriel is the Fallen Angel of Petty Temptations. She’s not really out to damn humanity—she just thinks people need to enjoy the little pleasures and stop being so hard on themselves. She’s also got lots of questions about the Rules, and the more straight-laced angels really don’t like that. Associating virtue with misery and sin with enjoyment might take old fashioned weight loss messaging a little too far or too simplistically into the moral domain. However, it makes for an interesting set-up as Gadriel finds the simple challenge has some surprising complications. It also means that each chapter opens, like a Bridget Jones diary entry, with a helpful running score of Holly Harker’s cumulative sin metric. (She starts on “-932” sin points – positively brimming with virtue). There were components of the plot that I felt weren’t fleshed out enough, particularly regarding the math teacher interactions. Overall, that is the main reason my enjoyment wasn’t higher, I just wanted this book to be longer. The other component I felt that took me out of the story at times were the points tallies at the beginning of each chapter. Things like lying or eating chocolate are negative points but helping elderly people cross the street or holding open a door give you positive points. It just took me out of the story a bit as the math is presented in the footnotes that are especially challenging to read on a kindle and I ended up just ignoring them at times.

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This is NOT a review of that book. Yet unavoidably, there will be comparisons between “SmallMiracles” by Atwater, and that seminal work by Gaiman and Pratchett. His/Her purview is minor transgressions. He’s/she’s not really evil despite the fallen angel status, but rather mischievous, and his/her agenda is not really sinister. What Gadriel does is prod humans to succumb to minor temptations, and thus achieve overall increased happiness and satisfaction with their lot in life. Cozy fantasy, hot cocoa, knit vests. Yes, there are problems that can be blown out of proportion and tipped toward a more cosmic scale, but they can also be resolved through heart-to-hearts and cupcakes.