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Having heard only good things about Sarah Beth Durst’s books, I decided to start with her latest, The Enchanted Greenhouse. It’s a follow-up, but stand-alone, to The Spellshop, so while it’s set in the same world of the previous book, the reader doesn’t need to know anything from The Spellshop.
Terlu Perna was a librarian in the Great Library of Alyssium when she broke the law. In the empire, only trained sorcerers are allowed to do magic, and Terlu, who is definitely not a trained sorcerer, figured out a spell to create a sentient spider plant. She was just lonely and wanted a friend to talk to. But the judge decided to make an example of her: he had her turned into a statue and displayed in the library.
A long time later, she awakes in an unfamiliar place, outdoors, cold, snow everywhere. But then she finds a huge greenhouse, many sections connected together, with lots of types of plants and climates. She soon learns only one man lives nearby: a grumpy caretaker who has been tending all the plants by himself for a few years.
The greenhouses are a wonder, and Terlu loves exploring all the beautiful, magical rooms and plants. But she finds out from the gardener, Yarrow, that they are inexplicably “breaking”: one by one, the magic that has sustained them is failing. And Yarrow was hoping Terlu, sent to him as a statue (along with a spell to turn her back to herself), would be a sorcerer who could fix them.
Terlu, however, has no idea what to do. She feels useless in the face of such a huge problem. She’s worried that someone from the center of the empire will find out she’s been freed. And … as soon as she determines that she’s going to at least try to do something to save the greenhouses, she’s worried she’ll be turned back into a statue for working sorcery again.
But Terlu is a kind and compassionate woman, and she cares about what she finds in this beautiful but cold place. She cares about the plants. She starts to care about the gardener. And she will risk her freedom to give all she can, even if her efforts don’t work.
The Enchanted Greenhouse is such a charming book. Reading it is like savoring a big cup of hot chocolate paired with a good cookie or bread fresh out of the oven (and Yarrow is always baking, so readers can salivate over his delicious goodies). I read it in the summertime, and I still settled in and got cozy with the story each night, enjoying the descriptions of each magical greenhouse, the talking plants with their cute personalities, the flying cat, the tiny dragons (yes!), and more. There is so much to enchant.
If you need a warm, low-stakes read to just make you feel good, The Enchanted Greenhouse won’t disappoint. (I just discovered it is considered in the subgenre of cottagecore, and I approve. Delightful.)
Rated: Mild. (It’s quite close to being a none.) There are two uses of mild language. Characters kiss several times, sleep in one bed only snuggling, and are implied at one point to have sex. A character shares an upsetting memory of being left alone as a boy in the outdoors to return home on his own, supposedly in order to learn to be more self-reliant.
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