Our main character, Sera, is grumpy but charming and the cast of supporting characters had me laughing out loud throughout the book.

A cargo runner, a fake boyfriend deal, and a revolution at sea. Sea of Charms is Sarah Beth Durst's cozy fantasy romance, third in the Spellshop series.

A cozy small-town romance set in the charming Dream Harbor, where a woman inherits a beloved café and finds herself falling for the grumpy local farmer who wants nothing to do with her plans. Autumn in book form.

She doesn't frame her mistakes as redemption arcs. A choice was made, lessons were learned, it worked out or it didn't. You go forward.

A young widow receives her late husband's final gift: one book a month for a year, each one chosen because he knew her completely. Grab the tissues.

“Incredible,” Blackwell echoed. “The audacity of men worth less than dirt.”

In my opinion, the revolution went too far. Something needed to change—don’t get me wrong. No one should cower beneath their government’s boots. But the Republic has become what it meant to correct: a nation ruled by fear.

She laughed to solidify the part she was playing. But deep down, her soul wilted.

Cats are rarely troubled by the things humans fret over, which apparently included the end of the world, and I found myself comforted by her insouciance.

Earlier, she’d felt a stirring from watching him wrap a present, for crying out loud, which she told herself was only because she found extreme competence a turn-on.

If you think there is nothing anyone can teach you, you are not just insufferable—you’re right. You will not learn anything… except the looming and painful lesson of failure.

Why are feelings so brutal? Everyone makes friendship seem like garden parties and sleepovers when really it’s Jurassic Park for emotions.

I realized that it didn’t matter how perfect I was. I was never going to be good enough because they didn’t want me to be perfect or extraordinary. They wanted me to be invisible.

But never underestimate the American bourgeoisie’s capacity to embrace fascism under the name of populism. Or the power of television. Without TV, Kennedy would never have beaten Nixon.

Heck, I’ve lost my temper a few times. Also, I can be a bit too blunt, and excuse it by saying I’m just an honest person, but if I’m truly being honest, sometimes blunt is just mean. Honesty can be an excuse for bullying.

And here we need to remember the lesson of the fishwife: that stigmas become attached to words that are often used by historically marginalized speakers, including in this case many speakers of African-American English and southern varieties of American English. This is part of why debates about words are so important: They are almost never just about words—they are about people and prejudice, about social and political issues, and about power.

‘She’s not sick, but there’s no life in her. I don’t know what to do.’

Removing his spectacles, as he always did when he believed that serious matters were at hand, the old man said, ‘Poor child. Reality is poisoning her blood.’