Stay for a Spell

by Amy Coombe

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 384
Rating:

Synopsis:

A joyful, cosy fantasy romance for anyone who's ever wished they could live in a bookshop.

One curse, seven princes, and a bookshop that you’ll never want to leave…

Princess Tanadelle of the Widdenmar longs to build a life of her own making. During a royal visit to the cosy town of Little Pepperidge, Tandy’s dream comes true when she finds herself cursed to remain in a run-down bookshop until she finds her heart’s desire.

More than a little thrilled, she hires a new assistant, teenage goth Sasha, and settles into life among the stacks. Despite the infuriatingly handsome pirate, Bash, who keeps showing up at the shop with his good looks and his own curse to figure out, Tandy’s new life might just make her happy.

There are just seven, minor, problems. With her royal duties unfulfilled, the frantic King and Queen send the seven princes of the realms to bestow upon Tandy a kiss, each one hoping to break the curse.

After all, what more could a princess want, than a prince?

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I saw other people talking about being interested in Amy Coombe’s Stay for a Spell, and I couldn’t resist: a princess ends up trapped in a rickety old bookshop, cursed to remain until she achieves her heart’s desire? You had me at “bookshop”, even if books set in and around bookshops often forget about the reading part and just treat books as purely magical in and of themselves. Admittedly, there is a bit of that here — Tandy’s love of reading draws her to the bookshop, and leads her to sell particular books, but sometimes the reading part still gets lost amid the selling of books and the handling of books as physical objects.

The premise is very wish fulfillment-y, and I feel like there’s a fair bit of the world that isn’t fully thought out and is a fairly generic fantasy world, but I had a lot of fun all the same. The obvious way to break the curse on a princess would be a kiss from a prince, is what her parents figure, so they send along the various princes of the realms…  But things don’t work in the obvious way here all the time.

For a start, it’s not quite as heteronormative as it might sound: one of the princes who shows up, Calla, is female (and Tandy’s sister is also a prince) — the rank is “prince”, regardless of the gender of the person occupying it. There are two prominent queer kisses in the book, albeit neither of them is romantic: one of the male princes kisses the also-cursed pirate, Bash, while Calla kisses Tandy (and it’s arguably one of the best kisses in the story).

The princes are neither all wonderful people nor all slugs: they all stick around and all offer their help to Tandy, even when their kisses fail to cure her, and even when they’re a bit personally unbearable at times. I really liked that Driz turns out to be a pretty cool guy. Kinda ended up wishing they’d all get together, with Bash too; life would be interesting, to say the least.

The way things play out felt a bit… conventional, I suppose? Compared to the stuff I hadn’t expected, like Bash’s kiss from Driz, and Calla’s kiss with Tandy. It feels very wish fulfillment-y, since Tandy gets to just stop being a working princess and lay aside her duties to stay in the shop with Bash. Still, there are things that still defy expectation (Bash’s curse isn’t broken), and I did ultimately like how Tandy and Bash (inevitably) got together, and thought there was pretty good chemistry there.

You do discover at the end that there’s a bit of an insta-love trope, which I’d sort of suspected and sort of hoped was subverted in some way… but Tandy herself mostly experience instant attraction, along with some annoyance, so it’s not too irritating.

Overall, I’ve said a lot about this compared to normal because it genuinely surprised me at times, and was a delight. I wonder if there’ll be any other romances in this world? Maybe kissing Bash awakened something in Driz…?

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)