Books like “The Spellshop”

What to read after “The Spellshop” by Sarah Beth Durst: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
Sangu Mandanna · 2022
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
Mika Moon hides her magic and never lets herself grow close to anyone. When a strange house asks her to teach three young witches, she meets a prickly librarian, a house full of secrets and the possibility of a place that finally feels like home.
2
Assistant to the Villain
Hannah Nicole Maehrer · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
Out of work and desperate, Evie Sage takes a job as assistant to the kingdom's most feared villain. Her boss is grumpy, the work is murder, and someone close to him is betraying him. Evie's sunny good cheer may be exactly what his gloomy fortress was missing.
3
The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy
Megan Bannen · 2022
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
Hart is a lonely marshal who hunts the undead; Mercy runs her family's funeral home and finds Hart insufferable. After a bitter week, each writes an anonymous letter to a stranger, and a warm correspondence begins without either knowing who is on the other end. Meanwhile, real life keeps forcing them together.
4
The House in the Cerulean Sea
T. J. Klune · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
Linus Baker, a lonely case worker, is sent to a remote island orphanage to check on six unusual children and their mysterious master, Arthur Parnassus. What begins as a routine inspection slowly becomes a choice between following the rules and protecting a family he comes to love.
5
Howl's Moving Castle
Diana Wynne Jones · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
Cursed by a witch into an old woman's body, Sophie takes shelter in the moving castle of the vain wizard Howl. Amid a fire demon, a scarecrow and Howl's tangled contracts, she finds a home and a way to break her own spell.
6
Legends & Lattes
Travis Baldree · 2022
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
Viv, a battle-weary orc, trades her sword for an espresso machine and opens the first coffee shop in the city of Thune. With a hobgoblin carpenter, a reformed succubus and a skeletal latte artist, she builds a warm new life -- but her old mercenary crew has not finished with her yet.
7
Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries
Heather Fawcett · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
Emily Wilde, a prickly scholar of faerie folklore, travels to a frozen northern village to finish her encyclopaedia. Her charming colleague Wendell follows, and the two must bargain with the hidden folk whose mischief binds the village -- and Emily herself -- to an old tale.
8
The Cat Who Saved Books
Sosuke Natsukawa · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
- Cozy Fantasy
- Found Family
A grieving schoolboy meets a talking tabby who leads him through a labyrinth of libraries to rescue books from careless owners. Each strange trial nudges him back toward the world and the people he has shut out.
9
The Goblin Emperor
Katherine Addison · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
- Cozy Fantasy
- Found Family
Maia, the exiled half-goblin youngest son, is unwanted and forgotten until an airship crash makes him emperor. He arrives at a hostile court with few allies and must learn whom to trust while trying to rule with kindness and stay alive.
10
Tress of the Emerald Sea
Brandon Sanderson · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Cozy Fantasy”
- Cozy Fantasy
- Found Family
Tress lives on an island where the seas are made of deadly spores. When the man she loves is taken by the Sorceress, she leaves her ordinary life, gathers an unlikely crew and sails toward the midnight sea to bring him home.
11
Twice Shy
Sarah Hogle · 2021
Similar plot moves: “Grumpy Sunshine” and “Slow Burn”
- Grumpy Sunshine
- Slow Burn
Maybell inherits her great-aunt's crumbling house in the Smoky Mountains, only to learn the grouchy groundskeeper Wesley is a co-inheritor with very different plans. Forced to renovate together, the dreamer and the shy, scowling loner slowly find in each other the safety they have always wanted.
12
Bet Me
Jennifer Crusie · 2004
Similar plot moves: “Grumpy Sunshine” and “Slow Burn”
- Grumpy Sunshine
- Slow Burn
Minerva overhears her ex-boyfriend bet the charming Cal that he can get her into bed within a month, so she accepts his dinner invitation to turn the tables. The sceptical actuary and the commitment-shy businessman keep colliding through meddling friends and sheer bad luck, resisting an attraction neither of them wants.