I listened to the audiobook. I think I would've enjoyed this a lot more with a physical copy as I wasn't a fan of the narrator. She made Elspeth sound like a helpless little girl and the male voices just made me cringe. Despite this, I will be listening to the next one because the story did pull me in with its uniqueness!

I mostly picked up this book because of the pretty cover. My expectations were somewhat high because of the quote "a mug of hot chocolate in a book form" printed on the cover. I mean, a story about a witch who works in a bookstore and is rediscovering her magic? Sign me up! But unfortunately this book did not meet those expectations, and I REALLY wanted to love this one.

Everything in this book was way too convenient and any time there was a problem, it was solved within the next two pages.

The main character, Belle, is a little bit dumb. She doesn't accept help, doesn't tell anyone about her problems, and makes decisions that made me want to rip my hair out. There was zero chemistry between her and the love interest. The few moments of romance we got felt forced and unrealistic.

The first fourth of the book could've been way shorter imo. It dragged and dragged and the whole time I was wondering what the plot was going to be. Then stuff kind of started happening at the halfway mark but really nothing groundbreaking happened until the last fourth of the book, and at that point I was just waiting for it to be over.

I wanted so much more from this. It had such great potential to be a cosy read but it just didn't that spot for me. By the end I felt like I'd been through a hurricane. Based on this book, I won't be reading the next one but I am glad to have had this experience. On the plus side, the writing was pretty good (though the amount of adverbs was driving me insane)