This is my third pass at this review. My first was an awestruck snarky rendition of the word choice and out-of-control dialogue tags, in just the free sample chapters on Amazon, following the impact of the book's second paragraph:

The ball screeched and new message fluttered out of it, asseverating: "Dear Amelia! We congratulate you on your birthday! . . . "

Asseverating. ASSEVERATING.

After a while I relented and converted it to a genteel critical review. I thought I could just let it lie there and not ruin anyone's day, but the other day I was in the shower and this choice line popped back into my head:

"You're a challenge! I will unravel your secret by all means!" I whispered in a voice full of hope and enthusiasm while inspecting my unusual gift.

Go ahead: whisper in a voice full of hope and enthusiasm. I desperately need to know what that sounds like.

So, I'm back to take a dump on Dear Amelia's birthday cake. I bought the whole book and just flipping through at random I immediately encountered this passage:

"The authorities are very discontent,” he pronounced in an effeminate voice full of meaningful expression.

I was compelled to read the whole thing to discover what other treasures this book held. To my dismay, it was not just clumsy dialogue tags and occasional odd word choice. No, it was much worse than that.

Warning: the end of this review has some spoilers for the book's ending, but they are such non-sequiturs that I can't think of them as spoilers, and if you make it that far in this review you're not really going to care.

I learned that this book was translated from Russian. One clue was the hyperlinks embedded in the e-book text leading to translation pages for various idioms. I was not surprised; even my initial read of the book's free sample gave me an Eastern Bloc vibe; it was probably because of how grouchy everyone was and a general bleakness in the portrayed daily life. I cannot review either the translation or the original text, only the book I have in front of me, regardless of the process of its creation. It's impossible for me to say how something specific went wrong, like "asseverated", or why, "We frisked that way for almost half an hour across a wild forest" is used to describe fleeing from a medusa-like monster; I don't think a word suggesting they were skipping playfully along at this moment is right. Anyway, I won't harp on more specific words, because the bigger problem is that there is a lot of wrong or just awkward writing that will stand out to native English speakers.

Since the dialogue tags were the next thing that struck me, let's revisit those. Again I will share my favorite exchange from the early chapters:

“My country is better!” a snarly voice with a heavy accent barked.

“No, your country is shit! Mine is hundreds of times better! I’m telling you! Listen to me!” another rumbling voice with an even heavier accent objected.

“You two dumbheads shut the fuck up! My country is the best! The debate’s over!” someone’s yappy voice concluded.

There is a fair use of "said" and "asked" so it's not all bad. Many times when an action that does not produce speech is used as a dialogue tag, the real problem is that the speech should have ended in a period, and not a comma.

“They did not tell me. They have already proved that to me,” I activated a small magic ball that I had been holding in my hand all that time and found that vulgar picture that Auslan had sent me.

It's obvious that this was meant as action following the dialogue and not a dialogue tag per se, but it happens so often throughout the book that it's hard to ignore. Another global problem with dialogue is that the tags constantly re-explain the speaker's intention or try to add interpretation that stronger dialogue would do for itself.

“He has a serious job. Ayaksa, do not forget that he works in the army. He does not belong to himself,” I defended my love.
. . .
“What did they do to you? Did they insult you? You can tell me, I will fire anyone who offended you,” Avzad demonstrated his alpha-maleness.
. . .
"They will always put us out on purpose. Now they find any excuse to oppose our rapprochement,” I explained the obvious things to a person who understood everything better than anyone else did.
. . .
“That’s because people aren’t sure about the future,” I allowed myself to break into a conversation among business gurus.
. . .
"The hairstylist uses some yummy minty shampoos which make my hair soft like silk,” I supported the dialogue diplomatically.

It's an even bigger problem that the frequency of dialogue drops off precipitously for the last two-thirds of the book, at which point it becomes a prime, running example of 'telling' over 'showing'. I'm going to elaborate a lot on this.

The book's overall plot is quite dreary, attributable to its 'memoir' format. The main character drifts through a variety of dull jobs in toxic workplaces, occasionally has love affairs that go nowhere, moves to several different countries which involves battles with immigration bureaucracies and international visas, and complains throughout all of this about how hard her life is because of external factors. There's not really any progression in any of this. So, let's turn to the magical/fantasy components of the story. Amelia somehow accidentally imbues her umbrella with a magical charm, supposedly born of her colleagues' well wishes for her future, and her love for Mort, her military boyfriend. Well, Mort vanishes from the picture after the first three chapters; after an overnight date that ends with Amelia maybe-poisoned, he just never contacts her again and she moves on with her life.

The umbrella sticks around though, and Amelia constantly refers to it as having amazing magical powers that have yet to be unlocked. Does it ever actually do anything? Eh, it floats her home one time in the rain. And one time, two miniature versions of people she knows from different magical creature tribes on magic Facebook somehow come out her magic ball (substitute for smart phones in this world) and they have physical substance and fight over her umbrella, but this is a weird isolated incident. After that, she says things like, "I immediately guessed what the problem was, if the Centaurs had set sights on my magic umbrella, then they would try to take it no matter what." And, "Most likely, her father’s friends from the police had given Harama a task to disqualify me and take away my umbrella for her sister. I knew it instinctively because all of the managers behaved oddly." And, The whole of Friurus had now been following the adventures of my umbrella. Everyone joined in that struggle as if the owner of the umbrella was meant to become the ruler of the Friurus." But, aside from these statements, no other character ever shows the least bit of interest in her umbrella. She leaves it unguarded and abandoned for weeks at a time, in multiple work locations, and nothing ever happens with it. So what on earth is she talking about, that whole tribes and nations are eager to get their hands on it?

This pattern continues after Amelia absorbs the umbrella's supposed magic into her body. She makes broad statements that everyone, including world leaders, knows about her and her magic. She infers that a popular reality show is really all about her and her life, and that the characters on it represent herself and her bosses and boyfriends, and that fans wanting certain romantic pairings in the show really want those in her real life. She eventually starts casting a series of letter-based spells in a magical realm, and then she states that those letters are appearing everywhere (like, in ads on buses, and on news broadcasts) as coded messages from authorities to influence her and state positions involving her spells. Sure, honey, the letter "A" appearing in print a lot definitely means that the world revolves around you and whatever you think you're doing.

The surrounding countries appeared to be categorically against that. They did not want to lose such a convenient scapegoat in my face. It was possible to shoot down airships without problems and destroy people by the thousands, attributing all that to the fight for me. It was very convenient for the magic leaders of many tribes to deal with their internal enemies hiding behind me.
. . .
In a few days, my uncle called and informed me about the death of my granny… She was old but I did not believe in her natural death either. It looked as if someone was taking revenge on me once again. The first thought that came to my mind was that Semir did not like that I gave up on him and wrote to my ex, willing to prove that he and only he could protect me from all evils. I believed it was he who ordered an assassin of my granny and make me repent for not loving him and running after his old ass. Again, there was no evidence and how could there be any?
. . .
Someone would use the number six, which was supposed to mean Semir and me. Since I was born on the seventh of July, everyone used that number in the news or wherever it was possible just to show that they knew about my existence and supported me.

The problem is that beyond the character's own statements, there is ZERO EVIDENCE that any other single person, let alone tribal or national leaders, have the slightest interest in her or her magic. Even through the main character's first-person POV, nothing happens to support her statements in this. Her own accounts contradict herself; once she had "A" and "B" spells, she cast these to cure her uncle of his cancer (which she believes was induced by nefarious government forces) but later nothing has changed with his health. Her own accounts of these amazing magic spells that everyone wants a part of later say that they basically didn't do anything at all. So what, if anything, of interest is going on in this story?

I would like to think of her as an unreliable narrator, because the only logical conclusion is that she is paranoid, delusional, with magical thinking (of the psychiatric variety), having full blown psychotic breaks when she fantasizes going through letter-portals and having adventures in a magical realm that obtusely impact the real world. But this, also, has no actual support in the text, so I don't really know what to think.

Confession time: I skipped the end once I bought the whole book, because I had to see what to make of the disorganized opening chapters; what was this book ultimately about? There, I read her final showdown with some world leader, who is referred to invariably in that chapter as "clown". Was this a literal clown, or was this just the name-calling that the MC devolved to? She is open to slinging insults elsewhere:

"Don't you know that only women of easy virtue sit here at night?" the dumbhead justified his behavior.
. . .
The Centaurs still persecuted me with their Avzad and the letter “A”. What could I do if the Eagles did not trust their worthless purulent flibbertigibbet Avzad?
. . .
“You, rooster, if you do not shut your rooster’s mouth, you will regret it dearly. I promise! Shut your freaking trap up!” I lost my temper.

So I was on the lookout for talk of this "clown", the leader of Lebria, the most prominent country in the book, and also the leader of the Werewolf clan. Her first account of him confirmed that this was merely an iteration of common politician name-calling:

In reality, I considered the leader of the Werewolves to be a clown.

But the next time he is mentioned,

The fact of the matter was that the leader of the Werewolves from Lebria was a clown. He had long red hair, artificial dentures, and he never took off his favorite hat — a blue-yellow-red clown hat with grunting bells. His hobby was juggling.

So . . . he is a literal clown. A werewolf clown. Got it. When Amelia, in the last chapter so this is really springing out of nowhere, decides that out of everyone who, in her paranoid delusions, has been tormenting her and following her every move and sending her secret messages and killing off her family members and acquaintances grandparents, it is this Lebrian werewolf clown leader who is the one responsible for interfering with her life and happiness, so she teleports to his office to confront him.

"How long will you continue to terrorize me and the entire world?"

"I don't know what you mean. Who are you, anyway?"

See, SEE? Rightfully he's like, "I'm calling security" and our Dear Amelia threatens to magically and mysteriously kill his daughter and entire family. She gets off one final tremendous POV insult, which I greatly enjoyed:

"Are you insane?" the turd shrilled with his fake teeth almost falling out. Meanwhile, the stench of the poisonous saliva excreting from his mouth, which he could not control because of his badly installed dentures, almost reached me.

Then she literally, out of nowhere is scooped up by an unnamed prince, because she decided that she wanted to just be a princess and so magicked this up for herself.

"Are you my prince?"

"Yes, my Princess. I've been waiting for you here for a while, let's go make some babies."

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. And then there's an epilogue in which everyone who was mean to her felt really bad about it, and her actions "saved not only me and my family but also the entire planet."

For some reason, I think that this entire book might just be a little bit of personal wish-fulfillment fantasy? Maybe?