Audiobook Review: The Enchanted Greenhouse by Sarah Beth Durst

The Enchanted Greenhouse
Author: Sarah Beth Durst

Narrator: Caitlin Davies
Series: The Spellshop (Book 2)
Publication: Bramble (July 15, 2025), Macmillan Audio (July 15, 2025)

Length: 13 hours and 32 minutes

Description: New York Times bestselling author Sarah Beth Durst invites you to her new standalone novel set in the world of The Spellshop! Follow her to The Enchanted Greenhouse, a cozy fantasy nestled on a far-away island brimming with singing flowers, honey cakes, and honeyed love.

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.

This time, though, she isn’t alone. Assisted by the gardener and a sentient rose, Terlu must unravel the secrets of a long-dead sorcerer if she wants to save the island—and have a fresh chance at happiness and love.

Funny, kind, and forgiving, The Enchanted Greenhouse is a story about giving second chances—to others and to yourself.

My Thoughts: This is Terlu Perna's story. After creating a sentient spider plant out of loneliness, she was sentenced to be turned into a wooden statue. She was to stand in the North Reading Room of the Great Library of Alyssium for some indeterminate time. 

Terlu wakes up later on an island covered with massive magical greenhouses. At first, she doesn't know how she came to be there and alive again. She needs to find the gardener which she does after a search of many lushly described greenhouses. 

Terlu finds the gardener who isn't at all happy to see her when he learns that she was a librarian and not a sorcerer. He needs to sorcerer to keep the greenhouses from failing. He's already lost more than 100 of the 365. 

Terlu would like to help him, but she greatly fears doing magic again. She doesn't think she could survive being re-statuefied. She almost inadvertently revives a sentient and chatty Ressurection Rose and from their other sentient plants. She spends time trying to learn the secrets of the sorcerer who created the greenhouses and the sentient plants. He died many years previously after sending all of his gardeners but one away and putting all his sentient plants to sleep. 

The sorcerer had grown more and more paranoid as the years passed and his spells were not only in a language Terlu, who has a gift for languages, doesn't know but they are also in code and include mirror writing and backwards writing to add to the difficulty of discovering his spells. 

As Terlu tries to learn the spells, she is falling in love with Yarrow, the last gardener. His faith in her helps her learn the sorcerer's secrets. The story was lush, descriptive and romantic. I loved the slow-build romance between Terlu and Yarrow. I loved the way each of them completed the other. 

I bought this one August 14, 2025. You can buy your copy here.