The Astral Library by Kate Quinn (audio)

Posted on June 1, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I don’t recall where I got this book recommended, but it was likely this enticing Shelf review by my colleage Katie. And what’s not to like: escaping into magical libraries, with some fantastical threats to manage, but also, spinning off into fictional worlds and making a difference. I found the start a little slow, or a little negative: we meet Alix on a truly bad day. A twenty-something aged out of the foster system, alone in the world, broke, she loses one of her three terrible jobs, gets her hours cut at another, and finds out her bank account has been hacked, making her measly $36.82 unavailable to her. Oh, and she gets kicked out of her shitty apartment. The one bright note is that the handsome Beau Sato-Jones, who runs a sumptuous boutique making lush historical costumes, needs her to work a couple of bookkeeping hours. The reader suspects that he think of Alix as an actual friend, but she doesn’t seem to take that seriously. And so, like so many bookish desperates before her, Alix heads to the library. There, she stumbles through a door.

From here, Alix finds the Astral Library and meets the Librarian. She learns of the option to live inside a book’s world – every bookworm’s dream, we are told (strangely, I’m not sure I’ve fantasized about this, although I’ll keep considering) – and is wholeheartedly ready to make the leap. But strange happenings in the Astral Library inspire her to instead ally herself with the Librarian. Alix becomes, however temporarily, a page. She travels to Arthur Conan Doyle’s London, and onward. On her way to finding her own home in a fictional world, she inhabits many, eventually making the cause of the Astral Library her own. And Beau will of course reappear, because obviously traveling to the worlds of Brontë and Austen require costume changes, and wouldn’t you know it, the Astral Library’s costuming department was getting threadbare.

As I said, the beginning of this book had me a bit down, with Alix’s string of unlikely and dour bad luck. But as soon as we hit that world of magic (and a delightfully grumpy Librarian), things picked up considerably. Alix’s crusade against bureaucracy, in defense of human rights, and centrally, in favor of the lofty raison d’être of libraries themselves can feel a bit pat, for those who have dwelt in this righteous space for a while; but honestly, it’s still not stale. There is a rousing speech or two, in advance of a satisfying ending.

The Astral Library has notes of romance, plenty of luxuriating in the power of story, lavish costuming, body positivity, and badass librarians. Also some critique of technology, as well as double-crossings and pain, but all resolved at the finish. Saskia Maarleveld narrates with great style, and I also enjoyed Kate Quinn’s reading of her own author’s note, and a conversation between Quinn and Maarleveld. I savored this presentation, and this was a solid work of escapism (Alix’s favorite) as well as an indulgent soak in library love, fantasy-style. I’d do it all over again – and, if Quinn is listening, I’d love to spend more time with Alix.

Rating: 7 tablets.

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The Reluctant Queen by Sarah Beth Durst (audio)

Posted on May 25, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Following The Queen of Blood is The Reluctant Queen, at center position in this trilogy. I continue to admire Durst’s worldbuilding and characters, imagination, and the hard choices and moral gray areas she presents. On the other hand, the sedate pacing that I felt worked in the Spellshop series is getting a little less effective here.

I fully expected the title to refer to Queen Daleina, who took the crown at, I think, nineteen years old. Not the strongest heir to the throne – in fact, she might be the weakest in terms of pure magical power – she is the only survivor of the massacre in the coronation grove, and therefore the new Queen of Renthia. She was decidedly reluctant… but is not the titular character. Instead, here comes a big plot twist and a spoiler but from quite early in this novel: Daleina is sick, soon to die, and therefore Renthia needs a new heir on standby, stat – but, let’s review again from book one, all the other heirs were killed when Daleina became queen. So, unusually, there ensues a great big scramble for one. Here we learn that, before the academies where Daleina and her peers were trained, Renthia used to find its women and girls of power – its heirs – in an older way: the champions traveling the villages, looking for regular citizens. And so that’s what Champion Ven does here.

And he finds a gem. Naelin is a woodswoman, a wife (to a pretty worthless husband) and a mother to two young children. She has always kept her power hidden, believing it will only get her killed, as it did her mother before her. But when Ven discovers her, he finds that she is the most powerful woman he has ever known, even in her raw, untrained form. She is also staunchly opposed to taking on responsibility beyond her family unit. It takes much of the book to convince her that the sense of duty she feels toward her own children may need to expand to the entire land.

One thing this book kept me thinking about was the tension between ego and chest-thumping, and a true sense of service. I already said that Daleina struck me as a pretty reluctant queen in her own right; by contrast to Naelin, she was there on purpose, training with the specific goal of maybe becoming queen, but not because she thought she deserved it or was owed it or wanted the glory. She struck me as being always clear that it would be a burden, a responsibility, and it was about keeping people safe, not about promoting herself – in contrast to the previous queen, and to some of her classmates at the academy (one in particular). Naelin is even more reluctant, resistant to helping anyone she did not birth herself – at a level that eventually felt pretty selfish to me, in fact. I felt a little impatient with her slowness to realize that queendom is not a prize, but a responsibility; and in turn, those around her who were in a position to advise, never took this tack directly enough for my tastes.

Some of this is due to the classic need, in storytelling, to hold back the revelation of certain details. Some of this is due to an accurate portrayal of human nature. But I sometimes felt like we could have moved things along a little more quickly than we did. Durst excels in painting a picture, a scene, and an inner turmoil. Sometimes she may indulge in a little more of that than serves her story. Especially when we got into some really high-stakes action episodes, I think we could move past the inner monologue, and especially when the inner monologues were reviews of character elements already very well established throughout the book.

I’m still stoked on these characters and the stakes of their world, and excited about where Durst chose to leave the plot hanging for book three – I’m genuinely invested in finding out what our queens will do next about the tricky situation we’ve left them in. So, a little impatient with pacing sometimes, but still in.

Rating: 7 cakes.

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Heartsong by TJ Klune (audio)

Posted on May 18, 2026 by pagesofjulia

As ever, here you will find spoilers from previous books in the series.

These are pure enjoyment and I can hardly stand the time I have to spend away from the Green Creek series on audio. Also, this image is the audiobook cover, but I do prefer the print version, below.

We spend this book with Robbie, and there is one big, early-ish spoiler that I think I’d like to preserve for any readers who are likely to get into the series, so we’ll do some white text below (highlight to read) and then keep the rest of this review brief. I’m keeping my spoilers to early in the book, still.

The book is told from Robbie’s point of view (as per usual), and in the early chapters, I was confused as to timeline, because he is with Michelle Hughes’ pack and apparently ignorant of the Bennetts, but also something is off. Does this precede the events in which Robbie meets the Bennetts, and importantly, Kelly? No: he has had his brain fucked with in a big way, his memories erased. While much of the book’s plot does handle issues that take place outside of Robbie’s head – werewolf wars and changes in the lives of other characters we’ve already come to care deeply for – the central and most important arc is interior. Robbie must rebuild his bonds with the Bennetts and with his mate, with those other players remembering their shared history and working hard not to take personally that Robbie does not. It’s excruciating.

What else to say? I’ve become very comfortable in and attached to both Klune’s storytelling style in this series, and Kirt Graves’ audio narration. These are the voices of these characters for me, and they do all have distinct voices: Robbie’s Chicago accent is pronounced, and that had been in previous books an occasional flavoring, but here is of course the main event. It took some getting used to. I salute Graves’ commitment to that acting. Also, I am no accent expert.

We end, obviously, on a major cliffhanger, with some of our favorites in grim circumstances. I’m barely holding on for book four.

Rating: 8 carvings.

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The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (audio)

Posted on May 8, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Another wonderful story from Kelly Barnhill, and I’m so delighted to learn that there are many of them! Joy!

In mythic tones, we open with chapter 1: In Which a Story Is Told. (All chapters are titled this way.) “Yes. There is a witch in the woods. There has always been a witch in the woods. Will you stop your fidgeting for once?” Some chapters are voiced like this one, with an unnamed storyteller addressing an unnamed child (we get some hints as to their identities only very late); others are more traditional third-person narration. We begin in the Protectorate, a place ruled by fog and cloud and sorrow, where the Elders, led by Grand Elder Gherland, uphold an important tradition. Once a year, on the Day of Sacrifice, they place the community’s youngest baby in a circle of sycamores in the dangerous woods to be taken by an evil witch, that she not destroy everything. The Elders are supported by the Sisters of the Star, who dwell in the Tower, holding all knowledge and skill; they are formidable warriors as well as scholars, mysterious and separate from the rest of the Protectorate, whose citizens, if not Elders, live in poverty and deprivation. We are also informed early on that Grand Elder Gherland knows there is no witch. The sacrifices are instead meant to keep the people subjugated and sad and under the thumb of the Elders.

But we also watch while a witch – a kindhearted, helpful witch, who lives in service to those around her – travels through the woods to collect this year’s sacrificed infant. She has no idea why the Protectorate’s people insist on doing this silly, cruel thing, abandoning infants in the woods, but each year she makes the trip and carries the infant, keeping them safe, warm, and fed, through the woods to the people in the Free Cities on the other side, where she rehomes them with loving families and they grow up safe, happy, loved. So there is a witch, and she does take the babies, but not like the Protectorate thinks.

The witch is Xan, and she is 500 years old. There is a bog monster named Glerk who is poetry-obsessed and much, much older, older even than magic. They are accompanied, in their lives deep in the woods by the bog, by a dragonling named Fyrian, who is just still very small (despite also being 500 years old), but believes himself to be simply enormous, because Xan and Glerk let him think he is – they say that they are giants. These are all characters of love, whimsy, silliness, and good humor, as well as of profound good. They are joined by Luna, the latest abandoned baby, whom Xan accidentally enmagics. And as the story unfolds, we also follow Grand Elder Gherland (not a sympathetic character); his nephew Antain, who wants for the Protectorate to do better; Sister Ignatia, head of all the sisters, who has a murky past; and a mother who becomes a madwoman in a tower but can be so much more. This is a grand fairy tale of a story, with dark, scary woods, dragons, volcanoes, sacrifices born of fear and of love, tigers, shapeshifting, paper birds, devotion, magic, built families… it’s a gorgeous book about everything. The beast, the bog, the poem, the world: “they are all the same thing, you know.” “I am the bog and the bog is me.”

I was reminded of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” and “The Lottery,” most obviously in the early, baby-sacrifice scenes, but throughout with certain metaphors about what loyalty is earned to whom, and who should give up personal priorities for a greater good. There were several delicious layers of dramatic irony and miscommunication, and misdirection about who the bad guys are (‘guys’ in this case being gender-neutral, obviously). I found it a lovely story about goodness, courage, love, and the many ways we care for one another and make families. Like one of our protagonists here, I have also struggled with the observation that “there is no love without loss,” but Barnhill makes an argument that it’s worth it. Christina Moore narrates tremendously. I’m such a fan. Do check it out.

Rating: 9 bunnies.

PS: I found out after the fact that this is billed as a book ‘for young readers’ and was quite surprised. That is, all violence and threat of violence is quite tame – baby ‘sacrifices’ entail just placing them gently in the woods where they are collected safely, and the worst injury suffered is a bunch of paper cuts (like, the worst paper cuts of all time) – but I found the themes complex and thought-provoking. I was thinking of this as a work of great imagination and whimsy, not one for young readers (I’m seeing ages 8+, and grades 5-9). So, take this as a strong recommendation for all readers.

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The Queen of Blood by Sarah Beth Durst (audio)

Posted on April 13, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I’m so taken by Durst’s Spellshop series that I had to find more, while she works on book three. The Queen of Blood is a departure in one way most of all: as is right there in the title, this one is a fair bit more bloodthirsty. I found it also intriguing and thought-provoking, and I’m looking forward to the next two in this trilogy as well, but make no mistake, this is not the cozy fantasy that Spellshop is. This is a fantasy about the things that are out there to get us, with a note of Hunger Games.

We meet Daleina first when she is six years old, and we see her come out lucky – or special – several times in her youth, when those around her are not so lucky. Because of these experiences, and for the sake of her dear parents and her beloved little sister, who believes in the elder sister’s ability, Daleina chooses to compete to attend one of her land’s special academies. There she will develop her affinity for calling and hopefully controlling the spirits. In Renthia, where Daleina lives, spirits animate all ‘natural’ forces: fire, ice, water, air, earth, trees. The spirits want two things: to create (which is why we have fire to cook with, and wind, and plant life), and to destroy – humans, in particular. The spirits hate humans, but they also need the balance provided by human control. Thus the land is ruled by a queen, chosen for her ability to manage the spirits. Queens are chosen from heirs, who are chosen from candidates, who are trained in the academies. (These are all women, as only women have affinity for spirits, although men may serve as champions and protectors.) Daleina is not terribly powerful, but she is highly motivated, and she brings an unusual perspective to her training. Her drive to protect her loved ones brings her into the orbit of the standing queen, Fara, whose powers may be waning; and the disgraced champion Ven, whose complicated past and secret campaign to save lives even in exile will impact Daleina’s own trajectory. Despite the highly competitive nature of their training, Daleina will form profound friendships with her classmates at the academy. She will encounter a chance at love. And she will risk everything for that oldest goal: to keep her little sister, and everyone else she loves, safe.

I was captivated by Khristine Hvam’s narration, with all the voices you could want (including those of fictional creatures). It’s a world to get lost in, with high stakes, double crossings and intrigue, romance and terrible danger, and the usual pains of coming of age. There was plenty to think about, and I’m looking forward to more – but this is a decidedly blood-soaked story, if that’s of any concern.

Love the imagination on Durst, and will be continuing to follow her.

Rating: 7 pies.

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Ravensong by TJ Klune

Posted on April 10, 2026 by pagesofjulia

As ever, here you will find spoilers from previous books in the series, but no spoilers for this book.

Book two in the Green Creek series is as devastatingly wonderful as the first. I did miss the audio format, which I’ll be returning to for book three (as soon as it’s available – hurry!).

This is Gordo Livingstone’s story. We know Gordo well from Wolfsong, but only from Ox’s perspective and in Ox’s lifetime; here, Gordo’s own childhood and upbringing with the Bennett pack alternates with a later timeline, starting with the time that Gordo spent on the road with Joe, Carter and Kelly, and beyond the events of book one. Somewhere I saw the four books in this series as being about four relationships; if book one was Ox’s story and centered his relationship with Joe, book two is Gordo’s story and focuses on his relationship with Mark. (No spoiler there: we knew they had something and now we know a whole lot more.) I will also say that there is a developing theme about the legacy of fathers. Ox and Gordo both had fathers who hurt them, and whose words continue to be present for the sons long after they’re gone. Their mothers remain present, too – Gordo’s mother left her son some difficulties, while Ox’s was all goodness – but the fathers-to-sons legacy feels like a greater throughline, especially with the male Bennett alphas taking surrogate places for each man. (Alphas can be female in this world, but the Bennetts, so far, have male ones.)

In some ways this is a continuation in kind. The Bennett pack is terribly powerful; they are a very loving and devoted family but also can be a demanding one; this level of commitment can be painful and costly, but the pack does its best to care for its own even when the process hurts. There is more, as one character termed it, mystical moon magic (romance, love, and definitely sex – not plentiful, but gorgeously written when we do get it). There is violence and war. Other wolves, bad witches, human hunters. There is a new threat in this book. It will take everything they have to stay whole, individually and together. There is love and lust and there is such angst, and for my money, Klune writes all of these (and the sex!) as well as anybody does. I’m stoked about book three, Heartsong.

Rating: 8 tattoos.

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A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (audio)

Posted on March 30, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Loving everything I’ve read by Sangu Mandanna, but **especially** The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, I was delighted to hear about this new one on audio. Thanks, Liz!

This is quite in the spirit of that other title, with themes of family, love, belonging, finding one’s own tribe, and owning one’s own strengths, weaknesses, and specialties. When we meet her, Sera Swan is a teenaged witch in training. More or less abandoned by her parents, she lives with her much beloved great aunt Jasmine at the Batty Hole Inn, which they run together. They have recently been joined by a witch in fox’s clothing (she is trapped in a fox’s body after a spell gone wrong) named Clemmie. When Jasmine dies in the garden, Clemmie gives Sera the spell to resurrect her, which Sera quickly does. She is probably the most powerful witch in all of Britain – despite being a girl, and still young, and most upsettingly to those in charge, a half-Icelandic, half-Indian, nonwhite person (the British Guild of Sorcery being as stodgy and, yes, racist as we might expect it to be). Jasmine is indeed brought back to life, along with (accidentally) her long-dead pet rooster, Roo-Roo, a mere rooster skeleton but avidly underfoot. But this great powerful spell has cost Sera virtually all of her magical power. This is devastating, because Sera loves her magic. Because the resurrection spell was not strictly legal, Sera has been exiled from the Guild to boot. (None of this is especially spoiler-y as it all takes place in the first few pages.)

Fast forward, and an adult Sera remains at Jasmine’s side, managing the Batty Hole Inn with much frustration, creative cursing, and precious little magic. She still mourns what she has lost, and thinks constantly about how to regain her power. But she is lucky to have Aunt Jasmine, for one – and Roo-Roo – and a motley crew of other residents: there is Nicholas, an awkward young man who thinks himself a knight, complete with shining armor and a very real sword; Matilda, a grumpy older woman who loves to garden (badly) and has become close to Jasmine; Sera’s cousin Theo, another young witch whose immediate family has abdicated; and still Clemmie, still a grumpy, meddling fox-witch. One of Sera’s spells from back before she lost her powers still protects the inn from those who wish harm, but reveals it especially to those in need of its particular kind of succor, which is how Sera has found herself surrounded by such loveable, messy eccentrics. And then a new addition to Batty Hole arrives. Luke has long been at odd angles to the Guild, but finds meaningful work in academic research if he keeps his head down; but his younger sister Posie is not so under-the-radar. At nine years old, she is a powerful witch and also autistic, which means she is not inclined to follow rules, including the all-important one about not letting mainstream society find out about magic. Luke is running out of options to keep his dear sister safe; they are quite on the run when they arrive at Batty Hole. The refugees only mean to stay a short while, but the two magical children, Theo and Posie, do well together, and Luke and Sera (onetime misfit magical children themselves) may have assistance to offer each other in turn. The newcomers fit neatly into the inn’s batty little family. Sera might even get her magic back – but at what cost?

Sera had always been good at fortitude. Fortitude was her friend. She had fortituded her way through undependable parents, megalomaniac mentors, scheming foxes, the death of a loved one, the resurrection of said loved one, the loss of her magic, and quite a large number of fiascos big and small since then. Unfortunately, she and fortitude seemed to have now parted ways, because Sera, glaring fearsomely at an empty glass teapot, was at her wits’ end.

So. There is a lovely built family of oddballs, finding ways to relate to each other on nontraditional terms. There is the trick of finding where we each fit in, and caring for children – and adults – who are different, but not less than. There are many kinds of love, including familial and romantic (and just a little sex), and at every stage of life. There is awe and magic, and there are bad guys and one battle in particular. There are absolutely laugh-out-loud lines, and Nicholas’s loveable but quite silly jousting. It’s extremely sweet, but I brought a sweet tooth to this cozy fantasy tale about community and gumption. Samara MacLaren’s narration was fun and expressive (and great points for so many accents) – perfect. I am 100% all in for Sangu Mandanna.

Rating: 8 scones.

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An Arcane Inheritance by Kamilah Cole

Posted on March 23, 2026 by pagesofjulia

“…it was nice to have [him] remind her that there was more to her life than school and murders.”
Dark academia, smoldering romance, mystery, fantasy, and examinations of systemic concerns to do with race and class: An Arcane Inheritance is a compelling, plot-driven story to get lost in, mostly. There were a few snippets that could have used another round of edits, but I’m still glad I spent my time this way, and I was definitely hungry for a sequel that doesn’t seem to exist. At least not yet!

Ellory Morgan is a Jamaican immigrant to Queens, where she lives with her Aunt Carol, only rarely hearing from her parents who remain in their home country. An accomplished student, she was accepted to Ivy League schools, but they remained out of financial reach, so Ellory had been working two jobs, caring for Carol (who is in poor health), and wishing for more, when she received an unexpected and unsolicited letter from the ninth Ivy: Warren University. They want to give her a full ride. Flash forward to three weeks in. She’s drowning in her con law class and beefing with the handsome, arrogant, privileged Hudson Graves (whose family name is on the Graves Library where she studies), when a strange thing happens. She steps into another realm, or hallucinates, or – could it be magic? – sees impossible things. And it’s not even the first time. For Ellory, Warren’s campus is filled with half-memories, déjà vu, and an increasing sense of danger. She could swear she’s been here before.

Ellory is drawn to journalism, to research and the quest for truth, so it’s not a great leap for her to begin investigating Warren’s history, especially the more disturbing chapters, like Warren’s ties to the esoteric, to old magic, and the Lost Eight: students of color who disappeared without a trace, over the course of years. To find answers, she finds herself allying with Hudson Graves, who remains both magnetic and highly irritating. What they discover together will threaten lives.

I’ll stop here to acknowledge the small things that, however minor, did detract from my experience. There is a humidifier running in the rare books room of a college library. Rare books generally need dehumidifying. The ideal humidity is nonzero, so you could conceivably find yourself in a place where they need more humidity, but that would be an awfully dry place, and I suspect not Connecticut. The rare books room is also unstaffed, and we’re watching these undergrads just idly drag their hands along the spines, which is not good rare-books-room behavior. Look, I know these are nitpicky little silly details, but they took me out of the story. If the author doesn’t have library background, no sweat – that’s why the publishing house has editors.

Check this one out:

This hidden balcony was barely large enough for three men of Hudson’s size, but it was perfect for the two of them; she placed her hands on the railing with almost enough room between them to open an umbrella.

I kept coming back to this sentence. It’s hilarious to me. There are not three men in this scene, of any size. There is a young man and a young woman. It is also not raining, and no umbrella appears within several chapters of this action. Why on earth are there three hypothetical men of Hudson’s size, let alone a random umbrella (which is anyway what, a pocket umbrella? a golf umbrella? This is like saying “the size of a car” when cars come in Smart and Excursion) on this balcony? It has that whole “don’t think about a pink elephant” effect.

I took such hang-ups with good humor, I promise I did. I like Ellory, her story mattered, I felt stress when the author wanted me to – there are definitely some running-through-the-woods, body-horror, life-on-the-line scenes that worked well. There were some less polished moments, but this is a well conceived plot and mostly very well written. And oh! I almost forget to mention a lovely design element: the page edges are decorated with some fairly intricate art, which is really nicely executed and makes for a genuinely gorgeous package. Not deckled edges (my archnemesis)! Like I said, I’d buy a sequel. Looking forward to more from Cole.

Rating: 7 glasses of white wine.

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Wolfsong by TJ Klune (audio)

Posted on March 20, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I took great pleasure in this great big Klune novel, first in a series (squeal!). At 19 hours, and over 500 pages in print, this is a nice deep dive: make sure you have the time, and it will be well rewarded.

We meet Ox when he is 12 years old, and his father, a violent drunk, is leaving. The father is not seen again, but he looms throughout the story, quoted as telling Ox that he’s stupid, that he will get shit all his life, that men don’t cry. Ox does go through some shit, but also finds so much love and surrogate family. The father is proven wholly wrong in the other respects, repeatedly and throughout, but Ox will be the last to believe that he is not stupid, that he is special, strong, capable, loved, and that his tears are okay.

Ox does have a lovely mother, and over time, forms bonds with his father’s former boss, now his own: Gordo, who runs an auto shop. The other employees at Gordo’s treat Ox as their own, too. And then, on his sixteenth birthday, he meets a ten-year-old boy named Joe, and will never be the same. Joe and his family are charismatic, powerful, beautiful people; they take Ox as one of their own, although it takes a little while to figure out what-all that means.

What follows is the building of family ties that are both literal, in this fantasy world, and figuratively, rather a fantasy of what we regular people might dream possible: indelibly strong connections and complete commitments. But also, drama and violence and betrayals, death and loss and grief; and also such love and passion, and just one or two extremely hot and fairly detailed sex scenes, quite late in the book. There were lines of absolutely exquisite humor, even among some of the worst and most painful parts. I wanted to include some of those here, but they were either too spicy or too spoiler-y, so please just believe me when I say Klune can make me laugh and cry at the very same time. For this reader, at least, he just excels at making me feel so much, so deeply. I would follow these characters anywhere.

This story is set in Green Creek, Oregon, a small, working-class town where the gritty real-world sort of bad things happen, but magic is also possible. A young boy who was told that he was big and dumb and slow can grow up to find and do surprising things. A young boy who has been horribly traumatized can remake himself, surrounded by love. I think I’ll stop here, because I want this beautiful book’s many, deep, complex twists and surprises to find you – if you choose – as they found me, unawares. I’m really excited about the rest of this series.

Kirt Graves narrates this audiobook beautifully. I’m sad that I’m not listening to him right now.

Rating: 9 slices of cucumber.

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The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst (audio)

Posted on March 16, 2026 by pagesofjulia

That’s what magic was: words that brought thought to life. And Terlu was very, very good with words – or at least with words like this. She couldn’t guarantee that the right ones were going to come out of her mouth in a random conversation, but this… this she felt confident about.

I love this series. It is snuggly and comforting – that is, it begins in a very different place, cold and lonely and frightened; but it spends these long hours getting to a place of calm and warmth.

At the end of The Spellshop, in my audio edition at least, readers (listeners) were treated to a bonus beginning of this novel. In that first chapter, we learn a little bit about what happened to Caz’s creator. The sentient spider plant was spelled to life by a librarian named Terlu Perna. Terlu was not a sorcerer, and therefore her magic was illegal; but she had been hopeful that it might be overlooked, because Caz’s creation was harmless, resulting only in new life. Her magic was not overlooked. In chapter one, we see her convicted and sentenced to be turned into a wooden statue. It seems she is doomed to be a statue – a mostly aware statue, but unable to move or speak – forever. Indeed, in The Spellshop, Caz and Kiela assume that when the Great Library burned, Terlu burned with it.

But now we know she didn’t. She awoke, came all the way back to flesh and blood, in the snow in an unfamiliar forest. Alive, but still alone, which is Terlu’s least favorite thing. She had created Caz because she was lonely and friendless, and needed a friend so badly that she risked everything. Now here she is, grateful to be back in her body, and then on the verge of freezing to death, and still alone.

She finds her way into a greenhouse. She meets a man, a gardener, apparently the only gardener in what he calls the Greenhouse of Belde, an enormous, elaborate, all-containing place, with many, perhaps even countless rooms. There is a greenhouse just for roses, one just for tomatoes, and four for vegetables, one in each season of the year. There is a greenhouse of singing plants, and one filled with saltwater and ocean plants. Terlu has never heard of the island of Belde or its wondrous, mythic greenhouses. The terse, grumpy gardener, a very handsome man named Yarrow, tells her he is the only one left. The sorcerer who created the Greenhouse is dead. All of the other gardeners had been sent away. And the greenhouses are slowly dying, one by one.

Terlu is likewise alone in the world, and moved by this puzzle, especially because the fate of Yarrow and his beloved Greenhouse seems tied to her own: she has nowhere else to go. And so, slowly, they build something. With the eventual company of a sentient rose named Lotti, and then a whole squadron of talking plants, they determine to try to repair what is failing on Belde. For Terlu, this means working illegal magic again, risking her worst nightmare coming true a second time. For Yarrow, it means trusting, opening himself up again after being abandoned by everyone he ever cared about. The story grows from there.

It wasn’t lost on me that Terlu made herself a friend – Caz – out of loneliness, because she deeply needed fellowship. And then Caz was inherited (so to speak) in book one by Kiela, who insists she needs no one and would prefer to be alone – but I think we can see now that her solitude is enabled by the company of the wonderful Caz. Terlu nearly lost everything, but Kiela was perhaps saved. And there is still time in their world for the good deeds to keep on snowballing.

For what it’s worth, I love that Terlu is solidly an academic. She enjoys study. She speaks (and reads) many languages, and likes to puzzle and learn. Also, as we know, it’s central to the plot that she is very social, needs company and conversation. There’s a charming bit (which I can’t find, because audiobooks can’t be riffled through like print ones) in which she recalls telling her family she wanted to be a librarian, and then having to explain to them that no, not all librarians just shush people and hide in the stacks; there are public-facing, people-oriented librarians, too. I love that! (Kiela was the other kind, happy to hide.) Faced with the markedly unfamiliar challenges of Belde, Terlu wants to be of assistance, and luckily finds a way to help through study, reading, and linguistics. Hooray!

The Enchanted Greenhouse is about loneliness and company, about finding where one belongs, about overcoming fears (and paranoia, even), taking risks and trusting. It’s about fellowship and building community. It does end in romance, as did book one. And there are plant friends (and a charismatic winged cat named Emeral). Variously labeled romantasy and ‘cottagecore’, this is a decidedly cozy novel, filled with good food and other comforts (but especially lots of good food). It moves at a decidedly measured pace – some readers will find it slow, but I’d offer the more positive descriptor, that it proceeds in leisurely or even cautious fashion, and rewards the reader’s settling in. Trusting, even. Once again, Caitlin Davies’ narration feels perfect. I’m anxious for this trilogy’s third installment, coming later this year, and will be looking into Durst’s other work. I’m delighted I found this one.

Rating: 8 honey cakes, obviously.

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