Today, Cafe Grimoire is lit with warm, sparkling sunlight. There’s no line at the bar, where Tini is making today’s special: a honey almond milk latte for a slow, steady trickle of devoted regulars and new friends alike. (Read on for the recipe to make at home or order at your favorite local coffee joint.) You’re nestled into a highbacked, black leather chair with your feet propped on a tufted ottoman that doesn’t match but feels right at home among the mismatched furniture, honey-brown wood floors, and overlapping rugs.

I bought The Honey Witch on a rage-fueled trip to Barnes & Noble shortly after the election. I took my kids, the gift cards we’d all received over the holidays, and told them that they wouldn’t have to use the gift cards on books that were likely to be banned—I would pay for those outright. We had a good discussion about what kinds of books were likely to be banned and why, and why it is important for us to buy those books now to 1) support the authors who wrote them and 2) own them so they won’t disappear. I had a list of books I’d planned to buy for myself—mostly non-fiction: Hood Feminism, Rage Becomes Her, stuff like that. As I stood with my arms full of books, and my kids adding to the pile, I looked down and there was The Honey Witch, the cover warm and inviting—everything I wished I could feel just then, instead of fury. I read the back cover—sapphic, magic, cozy—and added it to the pile.

$400 poorer (but with absolutely zero regrets) I came home, put my new books on my bedside table, and proceeded not to read them for a month. Fast forward to February, when I needed escape more than ever, there was The Honey Witch waiting patiently for me.

The blurb calls it “deliciously sweet” which is perfect. Friends, when I say this book was lovely… it really was. The story skips along, with a fair degree of “tell” that made it at once easy to read, but also kept Marigold, the main character, at arm’s length a little longer than I’d have preferred. In the end, the story and (most of all) the setting were so disarming, I didn’t mind the distance—in fact, these days, when the world is such utter shit, it was sort of nice for the pain and drama of the conflict to feel a little far away. I was able to read The Honey Witch without getting too caught up in it, which is exactly what I needed.

The setting is some undefined past when women wear dresses and stays, but also seem to have some degree of self determination. Queerness is given and unflappable, and semi-magical “talents” are commonplace enough to feature in the class hierarchy. I love a story where we get to keep the pretty part of history and fuck off with the rest. The magic system is as much imagination as it is rooted in threads of herbalism, which made it feel plausible in the world Shields created.

Anyway, I give The Honey Witch high marks, and recommend it for anyone seeking a calmingly slow, cozy little escape that will leave your panties damp, especially in the final third of the book.