【 THE SPELLSHOP 】

Genre: Fantasy (low fantasy)
Audience: Young Adult
Author: Sarah Beth Durst
Published: July 2024
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 376 (paperback)

Well, Sarah Beth Durst certainly nailed the brief when she said she wanted to write a book that felt like drinking a hot chocolate. This book has to be the definition of cosy fantasy, and I loved every second of it.

When I first started reading, I didn’t know much about the book – but the cover gave strong witch-in-the-woods vibes. And while it’s not quite that, it’s also not not that. I loved how extremely introverted Kiela was, and I mean like seriously introverted. It made for a hilarious read as her total aversion to unnecessary socialisation was front and centre at all times.

I also loved how unexpectedly developed the plot was. We don’t begin in a cottage in the woods, but in the midst of a rebellion in the capital city. And the cottage in the woods is less of a cottage in the woods (when we get there), and more of a cottage on a seaside cliff … adjacent to some wooded area. Everything about that made this super quaint, somehow.

I wasn’t expecting unicorns, centaurs, mermaids and many other magical creatures, either. I thought this would be more centred in the real world, with mostly just humans. But I’m so pleased I was wrong! And not to mention Caz, the sentient spider plant, who is clearly the highlight of the whole story.

The fact that Caz’s addition didn’t just make everything weird but made it better, was also impressive. There is just the right amount of not-taking-itself-too-seriously splashed into the story, that you feel truly invited to suspend disbelief and come along for the ride. Because hey, what isn’t amazing about a sentient pot plant who’s super enthused about research?!

Not to mention it took (somehow) more suspension of disbelief to accept the whole jam shop thing actually being viable on such a tiny island. And I thought it was hilarious how many little jibes about it there were, squeezed in from some of the minor characters.

So yes, this book is a warm hug and a delightful escape from reality, in the truest of sense and in quite a unique way. I love that in the author’s note, she said that she asked herself every chapter if what she was writing made her smile, and that was her measuring stick of whether she was on track. It really comes through. Highly recommend this for literally any reader.

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Title: The Spellshop
Author: Sarah Beth Durst
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The Spellshop is a cottagecore cosy fantasy following a woman’s unexpected journey through the low-stakes market of illegal spell-selling and the high-risk business of starting over . . .

Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people, and as librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she hasn’t had to.

She and her assistant, Caz, a sentient spider plant, have spent most of the last eleven years sequestered among the empire’s precious spellbooks, protecting the magic for the city’s elite. But a revolution is brewing and when the library goes up in flames, she and Caz steal whatever books they can and flee to the faraway island where she grew up. She’s hoping to lay low and figure out a way to survive before the revolution comes looking for her. To her dismay, in addition to a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor, she finds the town in disarray.

The empire with its magic spellbooks has slowly been draining power from the island, something that Kiela is indirectly responsible for, and now she’s determined to find a way to make things right. Opening up a spell shop comes with its own risks—the consequence of sharing magic with commoners is death. And as Kiela comes to make a place for herself among the quirky townspeople, she realizes that in order to make a life for herself, she must break down the walls she has kept so high.