Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for an ARC in exchange for an honest review! 

I’ve got some mixed feelings about this one. Homegrown Magic is a cottage core cozy fantasy with abundant queer joy and queer/nonbinary representation. However, there are few things that made it really hard for me to connect with the story. I found the characters to be flat which really took me out of the reading experience. We're constantly told about the characters and what they're like instead of shown – for example, their reactions to different events often seemed random to me because I didn't feel I got to know them. Yael's character presents themes surrounding being a part of the royal family and not agreeing with its values, and I think this part of the book really suffered because of the flat characters. The ending especially would’ve benefitted from some stronger commentary on the “real world” issues in this book, and I don’t think that would’ve taken away from the coziness of the book.

I'm usually pretty forgiving of the miscommunication trope, but for half the book, I wanted to shake both of the characters and tell them to just TALK to each other. They keep things from each for no good reason which was SO frustrating to read and made the end drag. It made it hard to root for Yael and Margot even though I really wanted to.