Soft and Sugary: Homegrown Magic by Jamie Pacton and Rebecca Podos
Homegrown Magic by Jamie Pacton, Rebecca Podos Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Nonbinary MC, queer MC, NB/F, queernorm setting
PoV: Third-person, present-tense; dual PoVs
Published on: 11th March 2025
ISBN: 0593873661
Goodreads
A delightful queer romantic fantasy full of friends-to-lovers chemistry, found family, rival family drama, and cozy garden magic from two acclaimed YA authors making their debut in the adult space.
Yael Clauneck is the only scion of an obscenely wealthy banking family with its fingers in every pie in the realm. They’re on the precipice of a predetermined life when they flee their own graduation party, galloping away in search of…well, they’re not sure, but maybe the chance to feel like life can still be a grand adventure.
Margot Greenwillow—talented plant witch, tea lover, and greenhouse owner—has never felt further from adventure in her life. She’s been desperately trying to keep what remains of her family's magic remedies business afloat. So when her childhood friend and former crush, Yael, rides back into her life, she’s shocked. But perhaps this could be a good thing. After all, Margot could use an assistant in the greenhouses.
Yael has no experience or, honestly, practical skills, but they’re delighted to accept. They can lay low for a while, flirting with Margot while they figure out what to do next. Meanwhile, Margot has plans of her own—but plans are notoriously unreliable things, unlikely to survive a swiftly blooming mutual attraction, not to mention the machinations of parents determined to get their heir back . . . no matter the cost.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
{ "@context":"https://schema.org", "@type":"Review", "datePublished": "2025-03-06T15:11:06+00:00", "description": "Cosy fantasy, elevated - at least until that ending.", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Every Book a Doorway" }, "url": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/soft-and-sugary-homegrown-magic-by-jamie-pacton-and-rebecca-podos\/", "itemReviewed": { "@type": "Book", "name": "Homegrown Magic", "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jamie Pacton, Rebecca Podos", "sameAs": "" }, "isbn": "0593873661" }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Sia", "sameAs": "https:\/\/everybookadoorway.com\/" }, "reviewRating": { "@type": "Rating", "ratingValue": 3, "bestRating": "5" }} Highlights~mechanical horses FTW
~plot-relevant fashion shows
~a masquerade ball
~heartbreak-curing jam
~extremely contrived relationship drama
Homegrown Magic is every bit as sweet and cosy as the cover implies – I’d actually rank it above most of the cosy fantasy I’ve tried in a lot of ways. It’s soft, and sugary, and pretty delightful, and wonderfully easy to read.
That’s probably the book’s best quality: how fluffy it is for the brain. When I wasn’t up to handling anything complicated, I could pick up Homegrown Magic – and still enjoy myself. The prose is a level or two above what I’m used to from cosy fantasy; a little more descriptive, a little less simplistic, and I thought it elevated the book nicely. The worldbuilding reminded me a bit of Spellshop, not because the settings are similar (they’re not) but in aesthetic and vibe: pixies being chased by swallows, rainbow bees, enchanted pocket mirrors for talking to friends long-distance. It’s all very candy-flossy, but with enough depth to stop it from hurting your teeth: details like the gender-neutral term of address ‘sir’am’ delighted me, but also made the setting feel simultaneously more real and more unique, like a place with its own culture and history – and we have the Clauneks and their cut-throat business empire, and enough fantasy capitalism, to make it clear that not everything is pastel-perfect.
An apricot slice of early-morning light shines through the crack in a pair of thick, velvet drapes, beckoning to Margot.
The biggest fly in the ointment is poor Margot’s business worries. Her parents left her with a ton of debts, one of which means that if she can’t create an impossible potion by year’s end, the village-slash-commune built by her grandmother will be repossessed. This is, of course, something Margot has (inexplicably) kept to herself, rather than inform the villagers of the threat to their homes and give them the opportunity to help, and the fear and worry and dread form a strong undercurrent throughout most of the book. It doesn’t stop Homegrown Magic from being wonderful wish-fulfilment, but it does make it feel a bit more relatable, a bit less fairy-tale-perfect – and I thought that was a good thing! It adds a dash of – realism doesn’t seem like the right word? – that I haven’t seen in anything cosy before.
Mikhil has his wife on one arm, husband on the other
Yael is a cinnamon roll who doesn’t know what to do with themself, and through pure luck ends up on Margot’s doorstep, which turns out to be the best thing for them. Learning to be less of a brat, and how to use their connections to benefit others, allowed them a fair bit of growth, but they did still feel a little one-note to me: pure sunshine, most of the time, which fit the book’s vibe but did make them feel a bit less developed. That being said, I’m not sure that wasn’t on purpose: Yael runs away from their family because they don’t know who the hell they are underneath the role of heir, and their arc in Homegrown Magic is as much about figuring that out as it is anything else. So their feeling like an under-developed person may have been on purpose – they definitely felt more fleshed-out by the end of the book.
I liked the romance between Margot and Yale, and I appreciated that it took more than a week for the characters to get together – the story takes place over at least six months, and although that does necessitate a few time-skips, I didn’t find them jarring (high praise, given how much I typically hate time-skips!) The romance actually stood out a bit for me, because Homegrown Magic is the first cosy fantasy I’ve come across that isn’t fade-to-black: the sex scenes are on-page and explicit, and Margot and Yael are both allowed to be sexual beings who feel desire and enjoy having sex. It’s refreshing! (Although I remain surprised and kind of appalled that they repeatedly ruin incredibly expensive-and-beautiful dresses in the process!)
The wards can’t tell the difference between blood and family, after all.
Unfortunately, Pacton and Podos utilise some of my most-hated romance tropes towards the climax of the story – namely [View post to see spoiler] – which were not just stupid and unpleasant to read, but were also wildly unnecessary (things were already complicated and tragic enough, the extra drama added nothing, and the ‘injured party’ worked out it was fake in a couple minutes). I’m also not really a fan of keeping dumb secrets, and eventually Margot’s refusal to explain about the debts and mortgages started to annoy me. [View post to see spoiler] Pretty much the entire last quarter (or maybe fifth?) of the book drove me up the wall – I almost DNFed, but was genuinely curious about how The Debts and Family Responsibilities (Margot and Yael’s issues, respectively) were going to be resolved, and knew I could finish the rest in about an hour.
Well, it was a wasted hour: the resolution was rushed, easy, and all-too-simple for me. I was hoping for something clever, or for Margot and Yael to work out a brilliant compromise, or something; but no, it was practically hand-waved – and down to luck, basically, at that. It was such a let-down!
The sub-plots of the potion Margot was trying to create, and Yael’s relationship to the Claunek’s source of magic, also ended up being really underwhelming: I genuinely don’t know why we had either one, because they didn’t end up adding anything to the story. But mostly, it was the terrible romance tropes that ruined Homegrown Magic for me – all that nonsense felt incredibly out of character, wasn’t necessary, and was just lazy writing. Up until that, it was almost a five-star read, but wow did that leave a bad taste in my mouth. And then the extremely lame ending, like a souffle that failed to rise. Because someone put in MAYONNAISE instead of egg whites…!
Which leaves me…really unsure as to whether or not to recommend this. Or who to recommend it to. Most of the book was wonderful! I really, REALLY liked it! But the last chunk was a kick in the teeth, and why would you want to read that kind of disappointment?
If you don’t mind completely manufactured relationship drama, and convenient magic-wand endings, then Homegrown Magic is genuinely lovely! But if you do mind those things, then this is probably not the book for you.
The post Soft and Sugary: Homegrown Magic by Jamie Pacton and Rebecca Podos appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.
