Finished "The Spellshop"

 Short review: I recommend it. It was fun.

I am not a big romance-novel fan. I used to mock them (so unrealistic!) when I was younger but now I know how important they are to some readers, and even though they're (mostly) not for me, I understand that for some people they are an escape and wish-fulfillment and fun reading and all that. 

And maybe some of them? I would like. 

This one is billed as a "fantasy romance" and it definitely is. It's set in a world that is not ours - there is magic, and that seems to be largely how the world runs (and when the capital city stops sending sorcerers to the "outer islands" (Caltrey, where Kiela winds up, is one of them) things go very wrong - the crops stop producing, some animals stop having babies, and there are "magic storms."

There DOES seem to be an allegory or subplot or something about the idea of a privileged few hoarding either wealth or power or knowledge, and how as a result it initially goes badly for the "less important" people, but eventually leads to harm for everyone (the whole rebellion in the capital city is apparently a result of the "hoarding" of magic by a few). 

That's the precipitating event. Kiela and Caz (the sentient spider plant, and he is a wonderful character) are involved with carrying books down to a series of flatboats - it's known there's trouble coming, and I don't know if at this point the Emperor has been defenestrated or not, but he is early on. Kiela has....well, like me she's pretty much edited herself out of everyone's lives. Her parents are both dead (there's a brief reference to a pandemic that happened in the past), she doesn't have any other family - so she lives in the library and seems to only have a nodding acquaintance with the other librarians. Her closest companion is Caz, who was "created" apparently by another librarian messing around with spellbooks (very forbidden to non sorcerers) who, for her trouble, was turned into a wooden statue. (And later on in the novel, Caz and Kiela realize with horror and sadness that when the library was burnt, she would have been, too). 

At any rate: they head for Caltrey.Kiela couldn't save as many books as she wanted but she has a lot of the spellbooks including some with spells for reviving plants and trees. 

Her parents' house still stands, is still empty, is apparently lightly watched over by Larran - whom we learn later was helped by her parents, and they showed him kindness when his parents did not. 

Much of the middle part of the book is a description of how she manages to start making a life - her plans to produce jam (after realizing there is none) followed by dipping a toe into the spellwork (the raspberries won't produce). She finds she has a talent for reviving plants; some of the forest spirits are aware of this and help her, she meets a couple of other like-minded women (they joke about forming a "coven" but Kiela is wary of that word, seeing that doing witchcraft/sorcery is forbidden for "ordinary" people, she doesn't want anyone to know). 

Things seem to go well at first. She makes friends - Bryn, who runs the bakery, and the centaur lady Eadie, and a four-armed harpist named Aline, and Bryn's nephew...and there's Larran, who is kind and handy and (it's suggested early on when he's up working on her roof) buff. In fact, Kiela who never had any kind of interest in such a thing before finds herself ... thinking about Larran hugging her and kissing her. (It is an absolutely G to PG romance; there's a tiny bit of mild peril but I would feel comfortable having a tween read the book. It's very sweet! And yes, not to spoil, but it DOES end with Kiela and Larran winding up together). 

There are a few bumps along the way - a magic storm, and a mysterious woman who seems like a threat (both as a rival for Larran's affection, and as a direct threat to the fact that Kiela has been using magic). And then there's a ship that arrives from the capital, and one resident almost ruins everything for all the nice people of Caltrey.

But again: without giving too much away, it winds up happily. I commented to a friend "it was just the book I needed right now" and I stand by that assessment. In her afterward, the author (Sarah Beth Durst) comments that she had wanted to write a book that felt like a "warm hug" and this book definitely achieved that for me. She wanted to write about what she loved and what made her happy, and it led to a book that worked really well as a pleasant read, a diverting read. And yet - like I said, there's the underlying hint (maybe only I saw it?) of "hoarding the good things of life leads to a lot of problems and maybe even revolt" contrasted with "sharing your skill and knowledge, if you're surrounded by basically decent and honest people, you will go far and be happy"

Interestingly, this is Durst's first "romantasy," her previous books were apparently horror. I wonder if she'll write more like this - I'd probably read them if she did.