The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

 Spellshop #1

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🖉Rating: 5/5

🖉Spice: 0/5

🖉Plot: 5/5

🖉Primary Genre: Cozy Fantasy Romance

🖉Blurb: 

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers' Favorite Romantasy (2024)

The Spellshop is Sarah Beth Durst’s romantasy debut–a lush cottagecore tale full of stolen spellbooks, unexpected friendships, sweet jams, and even sweeter love.

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.

Like a Hallmark rom-com full of mythical creatures and fueled by cinnamon rolls and magic, The Spellshop will heal your heart and feed your soul.

🖉My Thoughts:

Cozy fantasy done perfectly. Entrenched in a world of sparkling whimsy. If you're looking for epic battles, complicated magic systems or raunchy sex scenes you won't find it in these pages. That's what makes this book perfectly refreshing. There are some of the fantastical elements you'd find in a middle grade fantasy but the adults in this novel definitely deal with real world adult problems and relationship issues. That being said, the majority of these problems are fairly low stakes which lands this book in the cozy category. Sparks fly between our FMC Kiela and her childhood neighbor in spite of her anti social attitude upon her arrival, so you'll get yourself a decent dose of romance. It's squeaky clean though. This book is mainly about community and working together and how great tasting food can help that along. I absolutely love it. 

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