Oh, I struggled with this one, and I’m sad about it. Honestly, it could be that I didn’t mesh with the writing style. This is one of the ultimate cozy fantasy books I’ve ever read. However, it got a little too cozy for me.

I had high expectations for this one, and I’m so sad it didn’t live up. I loved the fact that we have sentient plants in this book. As a huge plant mom, it was so fun to read about living plants! Caz might have been one of my favorite characters in the whole book. Our main character, Kiela is a librarian who steals spell books to save them from a fire. She’s run back home and hoping to hide out there. Of course, once you start messing with magic, makes you a target. She was a fun character, if not a bit naive. Since she didn’t get out much and lived for the library, it’s not too surprising. The rest of the characters were interesting, and I loved the found family aspect. Small towns can be amazing when it comes to certain things.

I think my biggest issue with this book is the lack of world-building. We have this awesome magic system that I needed so much more of. I didn’t know how it worked or what it did. The fact that there is a talking plant was fabulous, but let’s dive into that! There’s a war going on, and it seems pretty deadly. We get a summary glossing over the things that have happened. Since I’m such a huge fantasy reader, this is where I wanted so much more from the book. We are not supposed to focus on that, but she laid out an interesting premise for this world.

Overall, this was an okay read for me. I didn’t hate it, and I didn’t love it. It did take me quite a bit to read because the pacing sometimes threw me off. We don’t get into much of the plot until the last 20% of the book. I kept looking at the % and wondering what could be left. There’s a lot of lovely magic and people, but it still couldn’t make up for the lack of world-building.

Thank you to Tor and Netgalley for an e-arc. All thoughts and opinions are my own.