This was a cute, cozy fantasy. It centers around Kiela, a librarian who must escape the violent revolution happening in the capital city of Alyssium. So, she saves as many books as she can and flees to her island birth home with her sentient spider plant, Caz. Once there, Kiela must learn how to start over and survive now that everything isn’t provided. She begins to use some simple spells to help plants grow and heal trees that have been decimated by the emperor keeping the sorcerers away and making it illegal for anyone else to do magic. But, she needs to be able to feed herself. In order to disguise the magic, she tells everyone it is an old family remedy and opens up a jam shop. Along the way, she learns that family is not just the ones you are born to, but the ones you make along the way. It is a sweet story, but it drags. I found it just too slow. Always the research and the internal dialogue that is basically the same thing every time she has it. There were some really intriguing aspects and creatures that just get sort of dropped. I wish it had given us more of that or more action in general rather than just at the beginning and end. But I did enjoy this.