Book Review: The Bookshop Below by Georgia Summers
August 14, 2026
I am going to be so honest, I was lost for a lot of this book. I started a book club and it is our September read so I felt like I needed to finish it, and really I am glad I did. I enjoyed the book quite a bit, once I figured out what was happening. It almost read as if it was part of a series or at least part of a collection of books in the same “world” but, as far as I know, this is the only one. I just wish I had a bit more backstory into the magic of books and the inner workings of the world that it took place in. I did end the book understanding more than I started and I think I suggest it, but you definitely have to fight through the long bit of not having a clue what’s going on (or what the book is even about).
We follow the story of a young woman who has fallen from grace with her mentor, who is the owner of a bookshop. In this world, books hold magic. Some are simple and sweet but others hold unruly weight that, in the wrong hands, can cause a lot of damage, or worse yet, unravel life itself. So, the bookshop owners are stewards of such power and in charge of making sure it doesn’t get into the wrong hands. Where we pick up in the story, Cass Holt, a sharp fingered thief, just found out that she was to inherit the bookshop that she had previously been exiled from by her mentor years before. She had made a mistake and it ruined everything. She was an incredible reader(spell caster) and a reading had gone awry and left chaos in its wake. Slipping back into the life of Cassandra Fairfax wouldn’t be so easy. Trying to hide from her past, and from the thief she became, while trying to figure out what happened to her mentor was going to be a challenge like she’d never known. Not to mention the creep trying to get her to read more power onto him and the bookshop owner convinced he should be the owner of her shop too, who was startlingly alluring, she couldn’t catch a breath. Not to mention the source of all the magic living in the books was drying up. Would she be able to keep her identity a secret? Would she be able to find out what happened to her mentor? Would she be able to save the magic?
