The Little Shop of Gentle Magics

Thank you so much to Jessica Rosenberg, Storm Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own!

4⭐/5

After her marriage falls apart, Meg MacIntosh buys a run-down tea shop in a tiny Scottish town, and before she knows it her life is full of a single dad, his two kids and a rescue cat. Cozy tea and cookie shop, found family, a bit of witchy magic, so of course I had to pick this one up!

I love when characters are older and I loved that Meg had gone through a divorce (that sounds psychotic saying I love it!) and is restarting her life again, finding herself after a tough time. After going through a breakup in a serious relationship of 7 years, I felt a bit like Meg in the last year too.

The characters are complex and complicated and I found myself frustrated and delighted and feeling all kinds of emotions towards this little family.

Some may not like the whole insta love, sweeping relationship in this (and any normal person in the real world would hate it and call out the many red flags here, no matter how much the author tried to have the characters appear very level-headed), but this is a book and I like reading about sweeping insta love things, sue me!

What I really disliked was how the author sounded out the Scottish pronunciation in the dialogue. It was very jarring to read, because the Scottish characters’ lines are spelled out phonetically, while everything else, including Meg’s dialogue, is plain English with no pronunciation at all. It gave the whole story a weird vibe of difference, like a divide, with the Scottish characters on one side (none of them main characters) and the American coming into Scotland on the other. Very weird.

There’s certainly some flaws to this book, but I have to say, it might become a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. If you love cozy witchy reads with an older heroine, found family and a sweeping romance, give it a go!