What’s the story?
“Doughnuts and Doom” does not contain quite as much doughnuts or doom as the title might lead you to believe. A more accurate title would probably be something more along the lines of “Potions and Indie Rock,” but that would be a lot less eye-catching and I would have been a lot less likely to pick it up myself. So, what is it all about? Well, Margot is a witch with performance anxiety who is pretty good at potions, but really bad at passing her magic exam license test. After her most recent failure, she has an encounter with Elena, half of an indie rock duo, who works at a doughnut shop. Margot has a severe need for chocolate doughnuts after her most recent failure and as it so happens Elena is the one to give the unfortunate news that they are all out. This leads to Margot losing control of her magic a bit and accidentally cursing Elena. From here on out the characters are intertwined as Margot works to undo her curse and both our heroines learn more about each other. As I said the peril is pretty mild and even the development of the relationship is pretty low stakes. It’s most of all just a cute story about two people meeting by chance and finding out they’re both pretty into each other. But I haven’t told you about the most important part: Stanley! Stanley is a snake and Margot’s familiar and every page he is on is just about the cutest thing possible.
Who do we see in this book?
There’s not a lot of variety in the characters present, but there are also about five speaking roles and I’d say 80% of the dialogue is between Elena and Margot. There is one delivery man who is coded as black and every other character with lines is coded as white. Though, technically, everyone is some shade of blue. If it wasn’t obvious by now, Elena and Margot are queer and there are no other relationships presented. Queerness is not considered an issue in the context of the story as the characters do not struggle with their identity and the setting is very positive and lighthearted overall.
How are the cutes?
🐍🐍🐍🐍🥚
4 out of 5 Stanleys. Everything is very twee and bubbly. The art tone is subdued but there are splashes of pink and there is, of course, Stanley.
