The Spellshop

The Spellshop

by Sarah Beth Durst
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / Romance
Published on July 9, 2024
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover Source: Library
Amazon

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

She and her assistant, Caz, a magically sentient spider plant, have spent the last eleven years sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite. But when a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz save as many books as they can carry and flee to a faraway island Kiela was sure she’d never return to: her childhood home. Kiela hopes to lay low in the overgrown and rundown cottage her late parents left her and figure out a way to survive without drawing the attention of either the empire or the revolutionaries. Much to her dismay, in addition to a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor, she finds the town neglected and in a state of disrepair.

The empire, for all its magic and power, has been neglecting for years the people who depend on magical intervention to maintain healthy livestock and crops. Not only that, but the very magic that should be helping them has been creating destructive storms that have taken a toll on the island. Due to her past role at the library, Kiela feels partially responsible for this, and now she’s determined to find a way to make things right: by opening the island’s first-ever secret spellshop.

Her plan comes with risks—the consequence of sharing magic with commoners is death. And as Kiela comes to make a place for herself among the kind and quirky townspeople of her former home, she realizes that in order to make a life for herself, she must learn to break down the walls she has built up so high.

I’ve been on the waiting list at the library for this book for a long time. If I knew what it was about when I signed up, I had long forgotten. But I got excited all over again when I saw on the cover blurb that there was going to be merhorses. I mean, come on, merhorses? I was in. I ended up reading this book in one day.

Kiela is completely antisocial. Her only friend is a magically-made spider plant who helped her at the library. She was so antisocial that no one thought to tell her when the library was attacked by rebels who killed the ruler. Caz, the spider plant, had to force her and 5 crates of books out of the burning building at the last second.

“She’d only ever been to one party that she’d enjoyed: after she’d won her job at the Great Library of Alyssium, all the junior librarians had been invited into the North Reading Room and told that, to celebrate, they could spend three hours reading whatever they wanted and then they could take a slice of cake with them when they left whenever they wanted and without a word to anyone. That had been bliss.”

They sail away to her abandoned childhood home to hide. With no real-life skills, she is forced to look at the magic books to see if she is able to use any of the spells to help herself. When she realizes that anyone can use the spells, which isn’t what people have been taught, she decides to open a small store to sell some spells on the sly. Her cover business is going to be selling jam. That’s all she knows how to make and she only knows that because she has a recipe card she found in the house.

This book is so sweet. The island community is made up of all kinds of people. There are centaurs and people with antlers. There are the promised merhorse herds and winged cats. Kiela wants to hide out as much as she can but she is forced to interact with her neighbors to survive. As she finds out that the island is dying because of a lack of magical care, she realizes that she may have brought the answers. It’s still illegal to use the spells though so she’s going to have to be sneaky. Things so hilariously wrong for a while until Kiela and Cam figure out how to use their books.

The found family vibes are strong in this story. There is also a great ecological plot line as she starts to work to restore the plants in her garden so she can eat and then realizes that she’s going to be drawn into bigger restoration projects.

This is a book to just sink into on a day when you want a cozy vibe with a fairly low stakes story. There is some suspense at times but you know that it is all going to turn out ok. Plus you get mermaids and sentient plants and singing trees and forest spirits….