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A Touch of Enchantment
What if tragedy itself crossed the veil, begging to be rewritten? Eliot wants only to tend his quiet London bookshop, to keep every last shelf, coin, and secret to himself. Yet when a battered old novel opens on its own, a girl steps from its pages: Zayva, a bashful scorpion-centaur with a heart far too large for her own peace.
Soon she is joined by others: a mischievous goblin with laughter like broken bells, a diligent bee-girl who cleans until the world gleams, a steel-eyed were-gator who hides her tenderness behind grit and southern poise, and, because the universe delights in irony, an bratty eldritch maiden in doll-lace and ribbons whose sweetness masks a madness older than memory.
These girls were stolen from the brink of sorrow. No one yet knows the stories they escaped or the endings that still wait for them in the margins. Eliot, sardonic, shy, and far too greedy for his own good, cannot help but hoard what fate has placed in his care: a strange, mismatched family that refuses to let their tales close where they once began.
But books are jealous things, and they do not release their characters without cost. Eliot’s greatest desire—to keep them safe, and keep them his—may be the very thing that unravels them all.
Soon she is joined by others: a mischievous goblin with laughter like broken bells, a diligent bee-girl who cleans until the world gleams, a steel-eyed were-gator who hides her tenderness behind grit and southern poise, and, because the universe delights in irony, an bratty eldritch maiden in doll-lace and ribbons whose sweetness masks a madness older than memory.
These girls were stolen from the brink of sorrow. No one yet knows the stories they escaped or the endings that still wait for them in the margins. Eliot, sardonic, shy, and far too greedy for his own good, cannot help but hoard what fate has placed in his care: a strange, mismatched family that refuses to let their tales close where they once began.
But books are jealous things, and they do not release their characters without cost. Eliot’s greatest desire—to keep them safe, and keep them his—may be the very thing that unravels them all.
822 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 2, 2026
13 people are currently reading
6 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 5, 2026
I made it about 50 pages into this book before I put it down for good. Everything was described in excruciating detail to the point I became numb to and and started to skim.
The MC is a bookshop owner that comes across as detached and somewhat flat. We get pages of descriptions about the smells of his bookshop, the texture of the bindings, the dust motes in the air, and everything else you can imagine. I was getting numb to the descriptions before the first "person" from another realm shows up.
That first woman is half woman, half scorpion, with pincers instead of hands. She's basically a centaur with a scorpion half instead of a horse. She's clumsy, she's supposedly a general but is fidgety and afraid she's breaking everything. The MC spends a lot of time describing her appearance, including how she smells. Through all of this, he never once questions why a portal opened up and a half woman, half scorpion fell into his shop. He just rolls with it. Even going so far as to not act shocked or weirded out about the fact she crawled into his bed because she's used to desert temps and thus is cold.
It was at that point I knew I just didn't care about the MC, and didn't want to read the overly verbose descriptions of everything and anything.
The MC is a bookshop owner that comes across as detached and somewhat flat. We get pages of descriptions about the smells of his bookshop, the texture of the bindings, the dust motes in the air, and everything else you can imagine. I was getting numb to the descriptions before the first "person" from another realm shows up.
That first woman is half woman, half scorpion, with pincers instead of hands. She's basically a centaur with a scorpion half instead of a horse. She's clumsy, she's supposedly a general but is fidgety and afraid she's breaking everything. The MC spends a lot of time describing her appearance, including how she smells. Through all of this, he never once questions why a portal opened up and a half woman, half scorpion fell into his shop. He just rolls with it. Even going so far as to not act shocked or weirded out about the fact she crawled into his bed because she's used to desert temps and thus is cold.
It was at that point I knew I just didn't care about the MC, and didn't want to read the overly verbose descriptions of everything and anything.
March 9, 2026
Pretty sure this is ai assisted, if not ai written. The overly flowery language and liberal application of em-dashes are identifiers
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews