A cursed princess must discover what her heart truly longs for in this charmingly cozy romantic fantasy for everyone who’s ever lost – or found – themselves in a bookshop.
Princess Tanadelle of the Widdenmar is disillusioned with life as a princess. She longs for real conversation, the chance to build a life of her own making, and uninterrupted reading time.
During a routine royal visit to the town of Little Pepperidge, Tandy’s dream comes true when she finds herself cursed to remain in a run-down bookshop until she unlocks her heart’s desire. Certain that someone will figure out how to break the curse eventually, and delighted by the prospect of an entire bookstore of her own, Tandy settles into life among the stacks. She finds it easy to exchange balls and endless state dinners for teetering piles of books and an irritatingly handsome pirate who seems bent on stealing her stock.
She even starts to believe she's stumbled into her very own happily ever after.
There's just one, minor problem: as Tandy's royal duties go unfulfilled, her frantic parents start sending princes to woo her, each one of them certain their kiss will break the curse. After all, what more could a princess want but a prince?

My Review:

There’s a saying that every cloud has a silver lining. As this story begins, Princess Tanadelle has just been cursed – which really should have been the cloud. But not for Tandy. Being cursed to be confined to a bookshop in the tiny town of Little Pepperidge wouldn’t exactly be a curse for any lifelong reader – and Tandy certainly is that.

From Tandy’s perspective, this so-called curse is the biggest silver lining she’s ever found. It’s not just that she can read to her heart’s content – something that her royal duties have NEVER permitted her to do – it’s that she can stay put and away from the endless duties that being part of the royal family of the Widdenmar obligates her to carry out.

Or rather, the endless duties that her parents, the King and Queen of the Widdenmar, and her older sister, the Crown Prince (not a typo, Prince is a gender neutral term for the heir to any throne in this world) have thrust upon her. None of her duties are onerous, and Tandy recognizes that she leads a VERY privileged life.

But Tandy is the ‘working’ royal who travels up and down the kingdom, representing the royal family in an endless round of anniversaries, dedications, etc., etc., to the point where they only times Tandy gets to come home are when the court is about to move to a different region for the upcoming season.

Her never-ending travel schedule is enough to make the READER tired just reading about it.

Tandy’s curse, as much as it inconveniences her royal parents, is an absolute delight for her. She can stay put. She can sleep in the same bed every night. She has a bit of privacy and something to actually DO every day instead of just waiting for her next appearance and pretending not to have a single opinion about anything at all because she might offend someone if she even asks a pointed question. No one would ever say she has a hard life, but it is wearing. (Or it is from Tandy’s perspective and the reader certainly catches that feeling.)

This is very much a cozy fantasy, so no one is being evil in this situation. Tandy’s parents are a bit single-minded and a bit clueless, while Tandy is an overt people-pleaser who simply doesn’t know how to say “no” and police her own boundaries.

Everybody gets a whole bunch of life lessons in this one, starting with Tandy.

The bookshop isn’t a curse, it’s really a gift in curse disguise. The curse is in the pursuit of the solution. Because to break the curse, Tandy has to discover what her heart’s desire IS and grab it. It doesn’t have to be love – and it mostly isn’t.

Which doesn’t stop her parents from sending a literal rain of princes to her shop to cure her curse with a kiss. Because that’s the way fairy tales are supposed to work. But this isn’t and it doesn’t while the town benefits GREATLY from the princes, their entourages, and all the tourists who come to see the cursed princess and all the princes.

The problem with the curse, from Tandy’s perspective, is that her whole life has been about what other people need, want, and desire. She’s never been allowed to want anything for herself. The curse and the shop that comes with it, are the first opportunity she’s ever had to live just for herself and figure out what SHE wants out of her life.

Which might just turn out to be a life on her own terms. If she can just manage to tell her well-meaning, overbearing, royal parents, “NO” for the first time in her whole, entire, duty-bound life.

Escape Rating A+: Readers will definitely want to “stay for a spell” in Tandy’s magical bookshop. This is a cozy fantasy that will go down every bit as easily as the lattes in Legends and Lattes and the tea in Tomes and Tea – even if just the idea of “turnip leaf tea” makes the reader’s mouth pucker every bit as much as it does Tandy’s.

Which does lead to the one thing I kept wondering. Tandy can’t leave the shop’s property. She can’t exit the front door, she can’t vault the fence in the back garden. But people can enter the shop – and do from her very first day. Why doesn’t she get food delivery arranged? Turnips all the time have to be getting boring even with magical cooking techniques to make them less “turnip-y”. I did wonder. Often. A lot, actually. But that wondering never stopped me from falling in love with the story and its characters. That this is the author’s DEBUT novel is amazing, turnip leaf tea and all!

Because Tandy has a steady visitor from the very beginning in the person of Sasha, a teenaged dracone who would be a goth if goths existed in this world. (In my head Sasha looks like Madame Vastra from Doctor Who, but your imaginary casting mileage may vary).

In Sasha, Tandy finds a kindred soul, someone who can spend hours lost in a good book and who needs a purpose to take herself out of herself. Tandy needs a helper and a guide, Sasha needs a safe haven in which to feel her own feelings, and their friendship is glorious for them both.

Tandy’s other visitor opens her world, as she’s not the only cursed person in town. The ‘barn pirate’, a man afraid of the sea he loves, can’t be kept out of the shop no matter how much he infuriates Tandy at every turn. But just like Sasha, the pirate treats Tandy as herself and not as Princess Tanadelle, helping to figure out who Tandy might want to be if she could choose for herself.

This story, just like Legends and Lattes (particularly Bookshops & Bonedust), Tomes & Tea (beginning with Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea) and Adenashire from its start in A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic, are all cozy fantasies that combine the building of a business with the fulfilment of a lifelong dream and just the right touch of romance into something very special.

Tandy’s curse, as expected for a cozy fantasy story, turns out to be a blessing in disguise. The charm of the story is in the way that she goes about it, not just that she doesn’t EVER sit on her hands and wait to be rescued, but that she works hard at making a new life for herself, even if it might be temporary and even if she doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing most of the time.

We simply like her, we enjoy watching her muddle through – even with the endless supply of turnips – and wish that every library and bookshop was supplied with a helpful nest of bluecaps to light the way AND help readers find the books they’re looking for.

I especially enjoyed the way that the ‘parade of princes’ was handled for how it subverted so many tropes. Tandy dreads the princes. Not because they’re evil, not because anything bad is going to happen, but for the string of disappointments. Especially the issues surrounding the last prince, which is built up to be terrible – and is, but not in any of the ways that the reader expects and it’s charmingly done.

I had a terrific time with Tandy and her bookshop in Little Pepperidge. The story gives off big cozy fantasy feels, so if you loved Legends and Lattes, Tomes & Tea, Adenashire, The Teller of Small Fortunes and its follow-up, The Keeper of Magical Things, you’re in for a real treat. (And in spite of having, admittedly, MANY of the same readalikes as yesterday’s book, Stay for a Spell and Death Meets Cute are delightfully different from each other. They may use a lot of the same settings and tropes, but they use them VERY differently. Which does not mean that they are not also readalikes for each other, because they certainly are).

I’m especially happy to be able to wrap this up with Tanadelle Courcy is NOT a Princess Anymore – and just like Violet Thistlewaite no longer being a villain, it’s the making of Violet, Tandy and this charming and cozy fantasy romance.