The Bookshop Below

• Author: Georgia Summers
• Genre: Fantasy
• Publication Date: November 18, 2025
• Publisher: Redhook/Hodderscape

Thank you to NetGalley, Redhook, and Hodderscape for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

In this extraordinary standalone from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The City of Stardust, a disgraced bookseller is offered the chance to restore a magical bookshop to its former glory, and enters a dark underworld of unscrupulous collectors, deadly ink magic and shady societies.

If you want a story that will change your life, Chiron’s bookshop is where you go. For those lucky enough to grace its doors, it’s a glimpse into a world of deadly bargains and powerful, magical books.

For Cassandra Fairfax, it’s a reminder of everything she lost, when Chiron kicked her out and all but shuttered the shop. Since then, she’s used her skills in less . . . ethical ways, trading stolen books and magical readings to wealthy playboys looking for power money can’t buy.

Then Chiron dies. And if Cassandra knows anything, it’s the bookshop must always have an owner.

To restore the shop, she’ll need the help of Lowell Sharpe, a rival bookseller who is everything Cassandra is not – and knows it, too.

But as she is plunged into a world of unscrupulous collectors, deadly ink magic and shady societies, a dark force threatens to unravel the bookshops entirely . . .

I loved Summers’ debut, especially her beautiful writing. The pretty cover caught my attention, but the idea of the story sounded incredible. I began reading this in physical form, but was approved for an audiobook copy halfway through, so I was able to experience both formats.

To begin with, Gabrielle Nellis-Pain did such a fantastic job with the narration. She has a smooth voice, a lovely British accent, and the ability to tell a story in such an engaging way that I didn’t want to stop reading. Even when reading the print copy, Summers’ writing grabbed me. I know she is able to create an engrossing magical world, and I was expecting to see that again in this book.

The book starts slowly, and the pacing remains uneven throughout the story. Initially, we are given a peek into Cassandra’s past and present. However, a lot of this part of the book isn’t just slow moving, it also involves a lot of telling, rather than showing. This was especially seen when Cassandra’s past is discussed, and I would have loved to be able to put myself in her shoes in the past.

There seems to be a really interesting magic system involving the bookshops, a river beneath them, ink, and doing readings. It sounded really interesting, but the magic system wasn’t ever explained well. I was left curious about how ink was involved in the magical readings that were done in the story, and I had a hard time understanding the connection between the different bookshops. I did like the way the story made me feel like I was seeing a palimpsest of a city—one version being the normal, everyday, nonmagical one, and the other being a chain of bookshops that are connected through a special river and ink magic. 

It took me a while to get into the story, because it moved a bit slower than I usually like. This made it a little tough to immerse myself in the story. The main character, Cassandra, repeatedly talks about how great of a thief she was in her past as Cass Holt, but we don’t actually get to relive those past scenes with her, because this is where a lot of telling not showing occurs. At times, it was easier for me to empathize with Cassandra, but at other times, she made poorly thought out or just bad decisions. It was hard for me to connect with her, and I found myself feeling more empathetic towards her at some times and less able at others.

There were a range of side characters. Some are those that Cassandra allies with, such as her bookseller, Byron, and Lowell Sharpe, who runs another bookshop. We get to know a little more about these characters than other side characters, but I would have loved to see more of who they are and what they were thinking. In a lot of cases, I prefer that one POV character tells the story, but in this case, I think it detracted from the story. For example, I would have loved to seen a few chapters from Byron’s perspective—she was such an interesting character to me. 

Any good fantasy requires a villain and possibly a crew of villains, and this book is no different. There are more than one villains in the story, yet they all came across as so one-dimensional. I would have liked to see any personality traits attributed to these characters aside from ‘bad,’ especially when Cassandra and multiple other characters are morally gray.

I’ve focused on the things that I found made it hard for me to connect with the story, but for the most part, the story was a good one, and I did enjoy reading this. I would have liked to see the magic system and world explained a little more clearly, but I really liked the idea of a magical world hiding just under the mundane, and this book is exactly that. Although the concept sounded better than it came across in execution, Summers has such a way with words that I couldn’t stop reading even during the slower parts. Her word craft is what had me hooked when the characters and story hadn’t caught up yet. 

Overall, this was a good read, but it didn’t quite measure up to the expectations I had from Summers’ other book. There is a rivals to lovers romance storyline, but it didn’t overwhelm the story, and it didn’t feel as believable to me. Instead, it felt more like a relationship that happened only because it was convenient for their goals and there was forced proximity—maybe I might have liked it more if there was a romance between Cassandra and Byron? At the same time, I will absolutely be on the lookout for future books by this author. Her writing style is so descriptive and beautiful without crossing into flowery that it made it easy to picture what I was reading about. Unfortunately, there aren’t any magical bookshops hiding under any local areas that I’m aware of, but a girl can still hope, right? I can recommend this one if you like your books to be heavy on vibes, and can handle side characters and a magic system that are on the lighter side.

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