I purchased a copy of Sarah Beth Durst‘s The Spellshop.
Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.
When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.
In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.
But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.
This was really quite marvelous, super sweet without being cloying or overly sappy. Kiela is an impressively practical heroine, and I do so love a practical heroine. The love interest is shy and awkward, while the town and townspeople are wonderfully accepting. But the real star of the show for me was the sparkling banter between Kiela and her best friend/assistant/sentient spider plant, Caz.
Yes, it plays a little loose and fast with the world-building and magic system. And yes, as much as I adored Kiela and her practicality, she is also a little too naive and socially awkward to be believed. I thought for a while that perhaps she was supposed to be autistic-coded. But in the end, I decided that not every character who is oblivious to social cues is written to be autistic. Regardless, I see there is a second (standalone) book coming out, and I’ll definitely be picking it up.
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