The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. Keila is a librarian. “It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. It was only that she liked books more.” “If there was anything in the world, she was good at, it was research.” “Are you ever lonely? How can I be? I have books.” Her companion is Caz, a sentient spider plant. “When the revolutionaries took the palace and defenestrated the emperor,” she escaped the capital with five crates of books. How will she survive with a “growing list of useful skills she didn’t possess?” The author says, “I want to write a book that reads like drinking hot chocolate.” She succeeded.
Keila has sequestered herself in the Great Library of Alyssium. Power and prosperity in the Crescent Islands Empire have been concentrated among the elite…until the revolutionaries depose the emperor and burn down the library, she escapes with five crates of books to Caltrey, an outer island where she was born. Once there, she makes friends.
This book includes magic spells, mermaids, merhorses, unicorns, and cloud bears. Keila’s first friend is a sentient spider plant named Caz. She plans to support herself with “Keila and Caz’s Jam Shop” selling jam and magical spells on the side. This doesn’t go as smoothly as she hoped.
SARAH BETH DURST is the author of more than twenty-five fantasy books for adults, teens, and kids.
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