Serena’s Review: “The Spellshop”

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Book: “The Spellshop” by Sarah Beth Durst

Publishing Info: Bramble, July 2024

Where Did I Get this Book: NetGalley!

Where Can You Get this Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | IndieBound

Book Description: 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.

Review: Sarah Beth Durst is one of those strange authors for me. On one hand, I’ve really loved some of her books; I gave “The Bone Maker” a 9 rating! But on the other hand, while I started out enjoying her “Queens of Renthia” trilogy, by the end, I was incredibly frustrated by the series and gave the final book a 5 rating. But given how much I’ve enjoyed some of her books, she’s still an “auto-request” author for me. Plus, “The Spellshop” sounded like just the sort of cozy fantasy I was hankering for!

So, with that introduction out of the way, I’ll jump to the end of the review and say that this book fell solidly in the middle of things for me. It didn’t live up to the highs that I’ve enjoyed from this author, but it also was far from the worst. But let’s start with the things I unequivocally liked. And the first thing that comes to mind is the tone and “vibe” of this story. This book leans in hard to the “cozy” aspect of its subgenre, and, for the most part, does it very successfully. It’s whimsical, humorous, and full to the brim with lovable characters, including a wide cast of fantastical villagers, a beguiling leading man, and, of course, the hilarious sentient spider plant that is Kiela’s best friend. Durst’s style of writing is also well suited to this sort of light-hearted fare, and it was easy to want to sink into the lush scenes that were painted on the page.

There were two aspects of the story, however, that began to drag it down. One of them was Kiela herself. I have to say, I was honestly surprised by this turn of events since when Kiela was first introduced, she was hitting all of the right notes for me. Her devotion to her books was both compelling but also funny at times, and her general reflections on her circumstances were initially quite interesting and had me eager to follow her on her journey. However, once she really started to settle in to the run-down cottage, things took an extreme turn for the worse. What I had initially pegged as a love of solitude that was played up a bit for laughs I quickly realized was in fact Kiela being incredibly naive and, at times, fairly rude. I was shocked when I realized that she somehow thought she was going to live in this abandoned cottage and no one was even going to notice, that she’d somehow be able to sustain herself completely independently based on…what? It was honestly so silly that I was taken aback. From there, she proceeds to be “rescued” from this silliness by her kind-hearted, handsome neighbor who essentially feeds her and fixes her house. And she proceeds to berate him and be rude. I understood the first time, but then she seems to double down, and I found myself beginning to mentally root for her neighbor, thinking he could do better and should just leave her to her own foibles.

I also began to struggle with the world-building and plotting as the story continued. I simply don’t understand how this magic system operates in the way it does. It seems that all that is needed in this world to do magic is to know the correct incantation and say it. That being the case, it was incredibly hard to believe that this information had been successfully restricted in the way that it had. Beyond that, I began to question more basic things. For example, when we first visit the tiny local village, Kiela describes meeting a handful of very diverse fantasy beings. We’re talking a faun-like creature, another faun-like creature but with wings, a centaur, a being with four arms, Kiela herself (a blue humanoid being) and more. All of these on what we are repeatedly (!) told is a tiny, remote island. And, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t stop wondering about how the biology of this all worked! These sure sound like different species of people, and yet they’re all on a tiny island where you have to imagine there are very few of each and…well, you understand my confusion. It was things like this that left me feeling as if the actual cohesion of the world-building was sacrificed at the alter of cozy vibes. All of these people were adorable in their own right and clearly stood in for the type of “quirky villagers” you’d find in a similar cozy mystery. But this is a fantasy world still, these things need to make sense as well.

I also struggled a bit with some of the plot and Kiela’s own motivations and priorities. She begins the story hyper-focused on protecting the secrets of the books at all costs. Again, we hear all about this repeatedly (if you haven’t caught up, being a bit repetitive was also a sticking point). But as the story continues, she quickly flips to not only selling the spells of these books but outright teaching others how to use them (again, from a practical point, would this be a believable choice for someone whose only source of income is selling these spells??).

Overall, this was just an ok book for me. There were moments that were truly enjoyable, and when I wasn’t distracted by questions about the world or Kiela’s decisions, I could find myself sinking easily into the experience of the story. But that’s just it, it felt more like an experience than a fully-realized story. If you’re a big cozy fantasy fan, this might still be a great fit for you! But if you’re a fantasy reader who needs there to be more meat on the bones of your fantasy world, this one will come up lacking.

Rating 7: Vacillating wildly between enjoyably cozy moments and frustrating pitfalls in world-building and characterization, this book was a bit all over the place.

Reader’s Advisory:

“The Spellshop” isn’t on any relevant Goodreads lists yet, but it should be on Cozy Fantasy Romance reads.