The Spellshop (Spellshop #1) by Sarah Beth Durst

Cozy fantasy is a tough genre. You have to have some stakes, so it's not boring, but the stakes have to be relatively low so that your readers are not stressed out. I feel like House in the Cerulean Sea and Legends & Lattes pull it off. Notable, I did not find either of their sequels particularly engaging, though. You can't always make magic twice, you know? 

So I went into The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst with some trepidation. It comes up as a suggestion A LOT when you start searching for cozy fantasy. Could it possibly be a non-boring, but somehow hopeful and safe feeling book? At the end of the book, the author wrote "This book is my gift to anyone who wants to escape and sink into a world filled with kindness and enchantment." (location 6191) Did she pull it off?

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Kiela is a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium. Her assistant is a sentient spider plant named Caz. When rebels set the library on fire, Kiela and Caz escape with a handful of spellbooks to Kiela's childhood home on a remote island. She finds life there has changed because the sorcerers are not controlling the weather. Crops are failing, the merhorses aren't breeding, and Kiela decides she can do something about that with the help of her spellbooks. Only that's not really legal. What's going to happen to Kiela and Caz?

Let me tell you, this was the perfect amount of tension and lightness. She's making jam and talking to a spider plant? SIGN ME UP. I want to live on this island and do spells on trees to make them stronger. There are cats with wings.  She falls in love with a handsome stranger WHO BUILDS HER BOOKSHELVES? Heavens. I'm getting verklempt over here. 

Look, this isn't great literature. I probably wouldn't recommend it to Uncle Rick (sorry! but it's true), but if you like gentle stories with happy endings and nice people and magical creatures you'll like this. 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. It was only that she liked books more. (location 133)

Well...I mean...huh. Who here doesn't agree with this?

Her father had once told her he hoped she found someone who made her smile. Just that. No fireworks like in tales and ballads. He didn’t wish her the shiver of romance or the endless ache of desire. “You should marry your best friend,” he told her. All those grand emotions, he said … they’re fun, but eventually they fade. They always fade. What was better, he’d said, was companionship. He’d wanted her to find someone who would be there for her, who’d laugh with her through the years. (location 1464)

Sheesh. My father just wanted me to get out of the house.

His relentless chatter reminded her of a bird excited for spring. (location 1622)
I always like a description of a person with an animal component. I especially like this one because it isn't mean. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

She wore a wide red dress and a matching red hat with a brim. (location 655)

Kiela had seen one once, in the hat of a library patron—brighter than peacock blue, with a shaft that looked to be made of gold. (location 1416)

She was wearing a wide-brimmed purple hat on her human head...(location 2896)

Eadie in bright green with a matching hat...(location 3686)

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Are you interested in cozy fantasy? Would you like one of your houseplants to talk? How do you feel about cats with wings?