Book Review: The Enchanted Greenhouse

Book #70 for 2025: The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst, 3.75 ★
384 pages / published July 2025 / available here

Goodreads blurb: Terlu Perna broke the law because she was lonely. She cast a spell and created a magically sentient spider plant. As punishment, she was turned into a wooden statue and tucked away into an alcove in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium. This should have been the end of her story… Yet one day, Terlu wakes in the cold of winter on a nearly-deserted island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses. She’s starving and freezing, and the only other human on the island is a grumpy gardener. To her surprise, he offers Terlu a place to sleep, clean clothes, and freshly baked honey cakes—at least until she’s ready to sail home. But Terlu can’t return home and doesn’t want to—the greenhouses are a dream come true, each more wondrous than the next. When she learns that the magic that sustains them is failing—causing the death of everything within them—Terlu knows she must help. Even if that means breaking the law again.

My review: This book was a tragic blend of my too-high expectations (I seriously loved The Spellshop) and a slightly underwhelming delivery. While I still really enjoyed Durst’s writing and worldbuilding, I found most of the characters annoying and the plot a bit too low-stakes even for my taste. Terlu’s repetitive mulling and lack of conversational filter reminded me of Anne Shirley – not in a quirky, charming way; Yarrow was also rather dull by contrast. The book starts out interesting, I struggled a bit through the middle, but found myself thoroughly enjoying the chapters towards the end, when the human cast is more varied. As a non-gardener, I didn’t find the non-human characters to be quite as endearing as Durst probably intended. I also found the worldbuilding to be too-focused and still not as fleshed out as it could’ve been. (Like, where is Yarrow getting all his eggs and when does he have time to gather them/make all those stinking cakes?!) All in all, I probably came into it expecting too much, but also, I don’t think it quite hits the mark as well as Durst’s prior work. Still an enjoyable read though and definitely low-stakes & cozy if that’s what you’re looking for.