The Spellshop was such a joy to read. I am just now getting into my cozy fantasy era and I can already tell that this is a gem among the subgenre. I am surprised it was nominated as a romantasy book in the Goodread's Choice Awards since I would not classify this as romantasy at all. It has a romantic subplot, but the main focus of the book is Kiela

escaping political unrest, starting over in her hometown, and finding a new family after her parents passed away

. I would encourage anyone who loves fantasy to read this, as the romance is not overbearing or weird in any way. There is no even any "spice" (just kisses).

I really enjoyed all the characters. Kiela is our main protagionist and while she is unlikeable at first, she really grows throughout the story and learns to care about more than just her books. The other characters are very vivid, even the ones I hated. I loved all the animals (and sentient plants!) as well. Caz was my favorite, of course. There was actually a moment where I laughed out loud because of something he did.

When he dropped "stray bits of soil" on Kiela's shoe. So funny!

Additionally,

I was shocked at how I bought into Radane's redemption—I didn't think it was possible after the whole cookbook thing. I do have to admit that I had this plot beat somewhat spoiled for me, but it still surprised me! And I wanted to kill that bitch Fenerer.

You may be wondering why I'm not giving this book five stars considering that I'm singing its praises, and that's beause I unfortunately had a couple problems with it. They are very minor, so most people probably won't be bothered by them, but they are as follows:

1) When Radane was pretending to be the imperial inspector, Kiela tells Caz he has to hide because she thinks Radane might see him and "misunderstand" about his origins, but... Radane had already met Caz at that point. Like, she had a full-blown conversation with him. She knew he existed. And then, when Radane was searching Kiela's house, she didn't even bring Caz up once. It was probably just a minor plot point the author overlooked, but it bugged me. 2) This is the bigger of the two: Radane and Bryn's "relationship" (if you can call it that) literally comes out of nowhere. They literally went from 0 to 100 in the blink of eye and it really took me out of the story. We don't even see them being friends—literally, we go from Bryn being distrusting of Radane to them locking lips in desperation the very next chapter. It was just very strange. I wish the author had put a little more time into developing them, or just let them be friends. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for the LGBTQ rep, but it felt way too much like the U-Haul stereotype for me.

If you like fantasy, I hope you'll give this a chance. It's super sweet and fun. I believe the next book is going to be about

Caz's creator

which I am super pumped for! Hopefully we don't have to wait too long.