Booksology The magic of Christmas is all around us but if you’re looking for enchantment of a specifically bookish kind, you’ll find it in the pages of Georgia Summers’ spellbinding new novel, The Bookshop Below. Set against a beguiling backdrop of magical bookshops, secret societies and unscrupulous collectors, this fantastical standalone follows a disgraced bookseller with a coveted talent for thievery who’s drawn back into the world of deadly ink magic when her former mentor dies.
Cassandra Fairfax thought she’d left Chiron’s bookshop in the past when the curmudgeonly, reclusive owner kicked her out and renounced her as his protégé. But now Chiron has been found dead under mysterious circumstances and he’s named Cassandra as his successor. As bewildered as she is, Cassandra is also curious. Because if there’s one thing she understands, it’s that a bookshop must have an owner, and with rival booksellers circling the shop like sharks ready to attack, Cassandra knows she can’t give up the one place that always felt like home to her.
To restore the shop, Cassandra needs the help of Lowell Sharpe, another bookseller who doesn’t believe Cassandra a worthy successor, and who’d like nothing more than to relieve her of the shop she’s inherited. They might start off as adversaries but as dark forces threaten to unravel everything they know and love, Cassandra and Lowell realise that they’re both fighting for the same thing: to save the mystical river that sustains the magical bookshops.
Having devoured Summers’ immersive debut, The City of Stardust, at the beginning of 2024, I’d been patiently waiting for a possible sequel or spin-off. As a standalone, The Bookshop Below might not be the book I’d been longing for but it was exactly the book I needed to round out the year with; a book so full of magic, mysteries and tender romance that I couldn’t help but fall under its spell. The Bookshop Below is essentially a love letter to bookshops, to the sellers who care for them and the readers who cherish them, but it’s also a gripping mystery about a dubious secret society and a love story about broken souls finding sanctuary in each other.
She’s never needed a key to enter before, and the bookshop, at least, has held to this. A breath of air whispers past her into the cool night, and she inhales. Cedar, dust, the soft-sweet smell of old books – and underneath, the sharp tang of ink.”
Cassandra is the kind of protagonist I adore; spikey and remorseless on the outside but kind and vulnerable underneath the hard exterior she wears like armour. She carries a lot of guilt and resentment, which is compounded by the sudden death of Chiron, who she loved like a father but who she also had a complicated relationship with. The world thinks she’s undeserving and she’s all too willing to play the part of the ruthless crook people believe her to be, because it’s easier than being a disappointment. But she does have a moral compass and the further we get into the story, the fiercer it becomes.
Then there’s strait-laced Lowell, whose instant hostility towards Cassandra plays out wonderfully and sets the scene for some truly delicious slow-burn tension between the two. With his buttoned-up demeanour, he has the appearance of an undertaker (albeit a sexy one), but there are rare moments when he loosens his collar and lets down his guard, and those scenes light up like gold on the page. Summers never overplays the romance and it’s the restraint – the lingering looks, the breaths held, the words that aren’t said – that leaves readers wanting more.
As a former bookseller and rare books student librarian, Summers understands the power of books, and that adoration of the written word, of the tactile thrill of holding a beautiful binding in your hands, shines through this story. Combine that with the nuanced central characters and the dangerous society trying to bring them down and The Bookshop Below is a dream book for bibliophiles.
★★★★½
The Bookshop Below was published by Hodderscape on 20 November 2025
