The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst

The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst

This book was recommended to me by my daughter, Elizabeth, one of the many books she has recently read. This is a cozy romantasy, I guess you might call it. It's clean, and by that I mean no sex scenes or coarse language. It's the story of a young woman with purple skin, Terlu, an extrovert who needs connection with other people, who takes a job as a librarian in the city of Alyssium. She ends up working in a section of the library where she gets very little connection with others, and she is extremely lonely, so she finds a spellbook, and uses a spell to make a spider plant sentient, so she can have someone to talk to. (In this world, magic is only allowed to be used by sorcerers, and it's a punishable crime to cast a spell if you are not a sorcerer). She and her plant, Caz, get along well, and then someone turns her in. She goes to court and is punished by being turned into a statue as an example to others.

Years pass, she drifts in and out of consciousness as a statue, and wakes up in the snow, someplace she doesn't recognize, and she is no longer a statue. Confused, she tries to get her bearings and discovers a giant greenhouse, made of smaller greenhouses. She meets a winged cat named Emeral, and eventually a young man with golden skin and black and gold hair, named Yarrow, the gardener in charge of taking care of the greenhouses.

She learns that the greenhouses, which are magic, are dying, and Yarrow believes she can save them. She doesn't believe in herself enough to think she can do that, and is fearful that the authorities will find out if she does, and turn her into a statue again. So will she do what she believes is lawful, or will she do what she must to save the wondrous greenhouses?

I enjoyed this book, it's on a world very different from our own, yet many similarities. The author chose to make many of the plants and foods earth foods, so for instance, they cook with garlic and tomatoes, or make honey cakes. 

This is a love story between an extrovert needing connection with people while on an almost uninhabited island, and an introvert who prefers to be alone but not totally alone. It's about embracing what makes us unique and celebrating it, not just in ourselves, but in others as well, about not trying to change others to be like us but just accepting them as they are. 

This author has written many other books, and I have not read any of them, but apparently this is part of a series, the first being "The Spellshop" so I will probably read that as soon as I get a copy of it.