The Truth Cookie

By Fiona Dunbar

Review by Laura Caroline

It’s the typical beginning of another Cinderella story, right; the kind, loving dad marrying the seemingly-sweet-but-on-the-inside-evil-girlfriend, bringing along her obnoxious son and dog. But this time, there’s a twist. Lulu Baker has no fairy godmother to help her along. She has to take matters into her own hands to show her dad the true people inside her future stepmother and stepbrother.

In The Truth Cookie, by Fiona Dunbar, Varaminta, the ex-model girlfriend and Torquil, her annoying and cruel son, hang around Lulu’s house all the time, harassing her constantly, but acting peachy-keen when Mr. Baker is around. Then when Lulu’s dad announces he and Varaminta are getting married, Lulu’s life takes a turn for the worst. Varaminta and Torquil are moving in, remodeling the Baker house, and firing Eileen, the motherly figure/nanny in Lulu’s life.

Lulu knows that on the inside Varaminta and Torquil are rotten and are not telling the truth on many things. So one day when Lulu finds a spell book with a mysterious note from her mother in it, something tells Lulu this book needs to be hers. She notices that there is a spell for making Truth Cookies, pumpkin colored cookies that make the consumer tell the truth. So to help her and her dad, Lulu sets off to get the ingredients to bake the cookies, because they are her only hope of getting her life back to the way it was.

When Lulu goes to get the ingredients, she comes across a strange house that she suspects it the place to get her materials. The doorknocker looks like a pharaoh and it suddenly opens its chocolate brown eyes to look at Lulu. Inside the house, she gets what she needs; one ingredient is crow’s eggs!

This is an awesome book! I really liked Lulu’s personality as a character and she was fun to read about. People who like to read stories that are realistic fiction with a touch of fantasy kind of genre will really like this book! I hope there’s a sequel to it!