The Little Shop of Gentle Magics Review: When the Blurb Promises More Than the Book

Read time: 5 minutes

📱📖 Read on Kindle (ARC by NetGalley) | 📃 328 pages
⏱ Duration: 4 hours | Genre: Fantasy
🏷️ Publisher name: Storm Publishing

Book Blurb:

Meg MacIntosh comes from a long line of kitchen witches, but she has never felt anything magical in herself, not even in the hand-decorated sugar cookies she pours her heart into. When her marriage falls apart, she skips going home, where she never fit in, and impulsively buys a cozy teashop in the small Scottish town of Banhaven. Ripping up old linoleum, collecting mismatched teacups and stacking loose-leaf tea jars to the ceiling, she settles in, and a little gray cat claims the best chair by the window. Then Arthur arrives, warm and determined, and Meg’s magic begins to awaken.

Let’s talk about the book:

I was fascinated by the description. There’s a shop. There’s a kitchen witch. There’s magic. There’s tea. It had everything I wanted in a book, and I went in assuming it would all be there. That’s where I went wrong.

The shop barely shows up, and the kitchen witch is only half there, if she’s there at all. There’s a hint of magic. Someone knows how to make tea, but that person is a minor character. The focus is Meg and Art and their relationship, and I could have been fine with that too, but I struggled with it. So many moments read as red flags to me, and I couldn’t tell whether Jessica Rosenberg meant them as lessons on what to avoid or didn’t see them that way.

Meg has just come out of a toxic relationship and happens upon a date where she feels seen and connected. For reasons only she can explain, she leaves the guy and goes to Scotland with her brother, where she buys a shop. He follows her, brings his two kids, and they all end up living in the same household. He lets his children “help” her build a digital presence without checking with her, then takes offence when she explains she didn’t ask for help. This is the same man who says he doesn’t like secrets in relationships, while holding on to one himself “to protect her”. He has two rules, one for himself and one for his partner. Personally, I would have run the other way, but that’s me. Let’s not project.

I’m moving on from the relationship. There’s a ghost of a grandmother who does very little throughout the book. There’s a hint of magic in tea leaf reading, and I hoped that’s where the story would pick up, but nothing came of it. That’s a lot of potential left on the table.

I read to the end hoping something would change, and it didn’t. I closed the book disappointed, because it ended up reading more like a list of what not to do.

Would I recommend it?

The Little Shop of Gentle Magics wasn’t the book its description promised me. The shop and the tea magic are barely there, and the kitchen witch is only half of one. The romance that takes their place had too many red flags for me to enjoy it. I kept reading, hoping it would turn around, and it never did. If you’re picking it up for a cozy magical teashop, adjust your expectations. Readers who love a relationship-driven story may feel differently.

⭐

5 books to read next

• Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
  If it’s kitchen magic you were hoping for, this one delivers it, with food that quietly changes the people who eat it.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
  Building a little shop from scratch is the whole story here, which is the part I wanted more of.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna
  The Goodreads blurb names it as a comp, so if that comparison caught your eye, this is a warm witchy household story to start with.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
  Gentle magic, a house full of kids and a slow-building romance you can root for without side-eyeing anyone.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
  A witchy family line and magic that lives in the kitchen, with much more of the family side than Gentle Magics gives you.

Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | Booktrovert | OpenLibrary | Litsy

Did the Blurb Fool You Too?

Has a book description ever promised you everything you wanted and then delivered something else? Tell me which one it was in the comments. And if you’ve read The Little Shop of Gentle Magics, did the red flags jump out at you as well, or was it just me?

Book Links

Want to purchase this or any of your favorite books while supporting a local bookstore? Consider purchasing using the sites below. These sites work with independent local bookstore owners to fulfill your book orders. #SupportLocal

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