Have you ever listened to a book and felt like someone gave you a warm blanket and soup? Caitlin and Sarah have created this feeling for me.
I picked this audiobook based on some review on, I guess, the TikTok app and probably made a little mistake by choosing the audiobook format. Please don’t take it wrong; Caitlin narrates this book excellently. I loved her voice work. But… I think audiobooks that are not duets or dual voice just are not for me. I loved Caitlin as a voice for Kiela, Ulina, and Caz (I hope I am writing it right 😀 Listening means I don’t know how names are spelled😂 ). But when it came to Larran, the voice just did not sit well with me, and it took a little enjoyment from the book. My enjoyment would probably be better if I just read it 😊
So, let’s look at this book and take my review with a grain of salt. I am probably biased by the audiobook format.
Short summary:
We will take on an adventure with Kiela and Caz, starting in a big city where rebels decided to throw out the government and destroy the library where Kiela and Caz are working. They agreed they would take some magical books, save them, and leave the city on a boat. Kiela has an idea to take them to a little island on the outskirts of the kingdom where she was born. They found shelter in her parent’s old house and decided that for survival, they needed to use some spells even when they were forbidden by law. Kiela also wants to help islanders, so she opens her jam shop that serves as camouflage for selling “remedies.” Will she and Caz survive on a secluded island? Will their remedies help the island? Try this book and see.
Review
Overall Rating: 3/5 📔
Characters:
Atmosphere:
Plot:
Logic/Relationships:
Enjoyment:
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Characters:
Kiela
I wanted to like Kiela; I really did. She was an introverted librarian—isn’t that the inner ideology of all bookworms? But Kiela made the first half of the book almost unbearable for me. She was missing motivation for her solace and rudeness. She somehow redeemed herself in the book’s second half, but it took a lot from my enjoyment that her inner monologues were the same.
Caz and Meep
Caz and Meep were highlights of this book for me. I loved
Caz’s personality and witty comments. He was the smart one in the party for a sentient plant and had so much personality that FMC lacked next to him. Meep was precisely the same without the ability to talk. It is unexpected when you like plants more than FMC😂
Larran
Larran was such a sweetheart. He was a big guy who wanted to help so much. As I said at the beginning, a lot from him took me to a narration by a woman. I just did not like it, and because of it, he seemed so bland and uninteresting to me.
Mythical Creatures
No one can hate winged cats, unicorns, cloud bears, mermaids, and merhorses. They made the whole story so much cozier and tolerable.
Atmosphere
What was amazingly written in this book was the cozy atmosphere. Nature breathed from every corner, and the food description sounded so delicious that while listening, I ate at least one whole chocolate just to deal with my tastebuds that were crying for the cinnamon bun 😅 Also, a magical system rooted in nature gave the reader a feeling of cozy fantasy.
Plot/Logic/Relationships
Spoilers
I wanted to love this book so much. It’s a cozy fantasy set in a cottage where the main character sells magic. It sounds incredible, in theory. But here comes “The But”. This story was probably just too cozy. Nothing much interesting happens in the first half of the book. And it felt so slow that it was nearly dull. In the book’s second part, the story starts to have some mild action; Redein comes to the island, and the Imperial ship arrives to find her. But everything will resolve somehow by itself. There is not much that FMC will do, and it was somewhat anticlimactic.
A love story with Larran was also a bit sterile. Maybe I am biased because I am a romance reader, but I was missing heat and longing, some struggle to overcome, so they fell in love. But there was nothing but FMC rudeness and awkwardness.
The plot lacked any tension, which is probably wished for a cozy fantasy, so there was nothing for me in this compartment.
I liked the fantasy aspect of the book. It was not a big fantasy compared to other books in the genre, but it was nice and cozy and helped build the atmosphere.