Sarah Beth Durst’s The Enchanted Greenhouse is a balm, a book that cradles a hurt heart by bathing it in beautiful imagery, delicious descriptions of food, and loving characters—some of whom are sentient, talking plants.
The story doesn’t start there, though. We begin in a courtroom in the heart of the Empire, where the librarian Terlu Perna stands trial for performing magic—an illegal act for anyone who is not a sorcerer. (You can read this passage and the first eight chapters for free, by the way, right here on Reactor.)
Terlu knew the rules, but she was lonely working in the stacks and came across a spell to turn a spider plant into a mobile, sentient friend (if you’ve read Durst’s earlier cozy fantasy, The Spellshop, you know who this plant is). When she was found out, the powers that be transformed her into a wooden statue, doomed to stand in the Library of Alyssium as a warning to others who may be tempted to attempt magic of their own.
Terlu’s awareness becomes muddled in statue form, until one day she awakes in the snow, once again flesh and blood. She finds her way inside a greenhouse nearby, and discovers that she’s on an island full of hundreds of magical greenhouses, each one filled with beauty and wonder, with descriptions to match it. Take this example of one of the first greenhouses Terlu visits:
Lilies bloomed in a thousand different shades of yellow, red, orange, and white, with stripes and polka dots. Bell-like flowers in pink and blue clustered on bushes. Fat firework-like clumps of brilliant white flowers exploded on another.
Between them flew butterflies like no butterfly she’d ever seen—their wings changed color with each flap: red to blue to yellow to black to silver to purple. She marveled at the ripple of rainbow as they floated from blossom to blossom.
Reading passages like these—and this book is full of them—evokes almost ASMR-level feelings. Terlu is also largely in awe of what she sees, and then comes across the sole gardener, Yarrow. He had asked the Empire to send a sorcerer to the island to save the magical greenhouses, which are mysteriously failing one by one. Yarrow is startled, confused, and disappointed that Terlu isn’t a sorcerer, but it’s clear that the two are destined to fall in love.
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The Enchanted Greenhouse
Indeed, a theme of the book is how much Terlu and Yarrow come to appreciate and care about each other. Terlu initially thinks little of herself, musing at one point that “everyone was going to find her disappointing. Nice and friendly, but not so impressive […].” Yarrow, however, sees her for the strong, capable woman she is, who is more than skilled enough to develop and cast complicated spells.
As for Yarrow, he is a man of a few words. And while he is an excellent gardener and superb cook (the latter of which the reader will appreciate as we read Durst’s delectable descriptions of his honey cakes), he has his own issues. We find out later in the story that his relationship with his family is strained, something Terlu supports him in trying to come to terms with and rectify—on his own time and terms.
As the romance between the two develops, we also get a smattering of plot, driven primarily by workings of the sorcerer on the island. As that wizard aged, he became insular and untrusting, banishing all the gardeners except for Yarrow and forcing the sentient plants he created into an everlasting sleep.
Because of this, Terlu, Yarrow, and the adorable winged cat Emeral are essentially alone on the island at the beginning. But then Terlu wakes up the plants.
The first plant to be revived is Lotti, a rose that Terlu inadvertently woke from hibernation after she found it in the deceased sorcerer’s lab. She then, with Yarrow’s support, uses the wizard’s notes to wake up the other sentient plants he created and then put to sleep. After that, we meet a bevy of flora: the slow-talking philodendron, aptly named Dendy, and the salt-loving halophyte, Ree, to name two. With their help (these plants are also mobile, carrying their root balls, encased in a clump of dirt, with them), Yarrow and Terlu work to repair the window panes of the broken greenhouses while Terlu deciphers the sorcerer’s notes, hoping to figure out how to not only bring the damaged greenhouses back to life but also stop others from failing.
We also get snapshots of life outside the island. Terlu was a statue for six years, and much has changed since she was turned into wood. Revolutionaries have violently overthrown the Empire, and the great Library in Alyssium has gone up in flames (something that readers of The Spellshop will also be familiar with). The strict rules about who can do magic have fallen with the Empire, though Terlu’s fear of getting “caught” performing magic again sticks with her, unsurprising given her statue-related trauma.
While a violent insurrection seems to go against this book’s cozy fantasy label, The Enchanted Greenhouse is the epitome of the sub-genre. All violence is off the page, and all the characters are essentially good, although some (and I do mean some) have flaws. That’s not to say there isn’t conflict or moments of suspense, but even the tension conveyed feels gentle, never leaving the reader nervous that something tragic is about to happen. Your heart is in good hands with this book, especially if you’re looking for low stakes, lots of love, food descriptions that serve as foreplay, and talking flowers.The Enchanted Greenhouse also gives readers words of wisdom from its characters. “I have to find my place. My purpose,” a shrubbery says at one point in the story. We are all that shrubbery. We all seek somewhere to call home and a life of meaning. And reading Durst’s latest novel provides us support and care as we work toward that dream.
The Enchanted Greenhouse is published by Bramble.
Read the first 8 eight chapters here.
