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Title: The Enchanted Greenhouse

Author: Sarah Beth Durst

Series: Spellshop #2

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: 4/5 stars

The Overview: Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a magically sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and tucked away into an alcove in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium. This should have been the end of her story . . . Yet one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly-deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses. She’s starving and freezing, and the only other human on the island is a grumpy gardener. To her surprise, he offers Terlu a place to sleep, clean clothes, and freshly baked honey cakes—at least until she’s ready to sail home. But Terlu can’t return home and doesn’t want to—the greenhouses are a dream come true, each more wondrous than the next. When she learns that the magic that sustains them is failing—causing the death of everything within them—Terlu knows she must help. Even if that means breaking the law again. This time, though, she isn’t alone. Assisted by the gardener and a sentient rose, Terlu must unravel the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer if she wants to save the island—and have a fresh chance at happiness and love. Funny, kind, and forgiving, The Enchanted Greenhouse is a story about giving second chances—to others and to yourself. –Goodreads

The Review:

Another delightful tale set in the same world as her Spellshop book!

This one started out stronger than the last – with a main character who immediately came across much more likable and a setting that was to die for. Terlu as a story lead was endearing and I liked the level of caring she exuded. That’s not to say I didn’t like the lead in the previous book – a woman who was a bit unapproachable and more in her own way (with a great growth arc!) – but Terlu here made for a much more relaxing reading companion.

And the setting!! A huge cluster of individual greenhouses hosting a wide variety of habitats and species. Truthfully I could’ve spent an entire book just reading about them taking care of plants and solving soil issues, but alas that’s not as marketable. It was the world-building component that kept my interest sparked and ultimately provided my favorite takeaways from the book. I especially loved the pollinator dragons.

So even though the best elements remained strong throughout the entire book, there were a few minor things that eventually knocked me off a slam-dunk high rating: conflicts and pacing.

The conflict in this story was off somehow, perhaps not quite robust enough for the length of the story. On one hand it’s a cozy fantasy and the conflict in those can be anything as simple as “Gosh I really need to spruce up this cottage because it’s filthy.” So maybe needing a more robust conflict wasn’t the problem, but it definitely needed something… more. More cozy-world problems. More day in the life of a greenhouse gardener-type of vibes. The grand conflict overarching the story I thought was great, but the solution didn’t require enough elements to merit a large page count, so it was kind of in and out.

And then you have a third drama point where the main character is fixated on the problems of a different character – that was the part I really didn’t like. It felt like she didn’t have enough going on to drive a story, so she had to borrow problems. So I think between her not having enough internal conflict and the simple overarching plot is why the pacing felt a little off. And there wasn’t enough of that cozy “nesting into our new environment” element to keep me engaged in the meantime.

While the romance in the first book was so subtle and lovely that it didn’t even feel like a major component to the book – in this one the romance was much more heavy-handed. I like that Durst’s male leads are kind people with a lot of compassion and and positive regard for the main characters. I also like that they both managed to showcase these attributes in completely different ways. I will admit that in this one, I found the back-and-forth between the two a bit too saccharin. But it’s a cozy fantasy so I just leaned into it.

Despite a couple of minor issues that kept the book from being higher rated than the first one, the last couple of chapters really brought it home for me and I ended up walking away really glad that I had read it. I’m especially excited for Sea of Charms currently slated for release on July 21, 2026

Recommendations: if you’re in the mood for a cozy fantasy with a touch of romance (and I mean only just a touch in the first book) this series is an absolute delight… give it a try!

Thank you to my Patrons: Dave, Katrin, Frank, Jen, Sonja, Staci, Kat, Betsy, Eliss, Mike, Elizabeth, Bee, Tracey, Poochtee, Kinsey, and Alysa! <3

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By Niki Hawkes

Title: Foundryside

Author: Robert Jackson Bennett

Series: Foundryside #1

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

The Overview: Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle. But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been sent to steal an artifact of unimaginable power, an object that could revolutionize the magical technology known as scriving. The Merchant Houses who control this magic–the art of using coded commands to imbue everyday objects with sentience–have already used it to transform Tevanne into a vast, remorseless capitalist machine. But if they can unlock the artifact’s secrets, they will rewrite the world itself to suit their aims. Now someone in those Houses wants Sancia dead, and the artifact for themselves. And in the city of Tevanne, there’s nobody with the power to stop them. To have a chance at surviving—and at stopping the deadly transformation that’s under way—Sancia will have to marshal unlikely allies, learn to harness the artifact’s power for herself, and undergo her own transformation, one that will turn her into something she could never have imagined. –Goodreads

The Review:

I picked up Foundryside on a total whim, and haven’t had this much fun with a book in ages!

I don’t like to know much about my books before diving in, so with this one I was going off of general impressions of the cover and a random comment about the book having a fun magic system. I was expecting a rather hard-edge fantasy, and was taken completely by surprise at the levity and general light-heartedness of the story. It was charming! And a not unwelcome blown expectation.

You know how some books have a great idea for a magic system but it never explores it fully and you’re left thinking it was cool, but mostly an opportunity wasted? That is sooo not the case here! The magic system was loads of fun – a perfect combination of Sanderson’s allomancy from Mistborn and Rachel Aaron’s … we’ll call it “object persuasion,” in her Eli Monpress series. So good!! It was abundant without ever becoming too much. And the desire to learn more about how it all works already has me hounding for the second book.

You also know how even sometimes when the book explores the magic system fully how sometimes all of the other components suffer, so it’s ONLY a good magic book? That wasn’t the case here either. I’m not going to pretend it was the best at handling all the other elements, but it did them all well enough to allow me to shut off the critical part of my mind and just go with it. I loved the idea of the different houses driving the innovation forward with “first to market” competition. I loved the characters we got to know (and a couple of their basic profiles reminded me of a few in Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold, but that could just be a coincidence) and particularly loved how each profile was integrated into the story – it was a cool progression! and I’m totally on board with the overall plot.

There are few books that evoke that same sense of wonder and excitement I got as a kid while reading things like Harry Potter and, later, Fablehaven. This struck all the right chords for me and gave me that same sense of wonder and novelty. I loved it.

As I’ve been reading a lot of dark, gritty series lately, I was starting to think something as outright cheerful as this wouldn’t work for me anymore. There were some situations in this story that worked themselves out much better than they would have in an Abercrombie book, and it reminded me that not everything has to end in death and torture for me to gain a lot of meaning and substance from a book. This story brought back a bit of optimism and fun into my experience, for which I’m quite grateful.

Recommendations: for a fun, light-hearted adventure filled with cool magic, great characters, and an action-packed plot, Foundryside is going to be a new favorite to recommend.

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