August Bloom on the inspiration behind cosy fantasy The Tiny Magic Bookshop
We’ve all stepped inside a bookshop and immediately fallen a little in love, right?
As someone who has been ridiculously bookish from a young age, I have never gotten over that thrill of finding a new bookshop. Even spotting the sign as I walk down the street instantly brings a smile to my face.
Bookshops are my kind of place. They’re peaceful and cosy (no matter how gloriously sprawling some of them may be) and they’re full of stories to escape into. Long before I started writing my own stories, I felt at home surrounded by books. Stepping into a new bookshop is like discovering a treasure trove.
That’s what it felt like stepping into Lamplight Books, the business at the heart of The Tiny Magic Bookshop. I firmly believe that everyone who is even a little bookish spends a not insignificant amount of time imagining what it would be like to own a bookshop, and when writing this story I got to plumb the depths of all my wildest dreams.
For most of us, we probably imagine being more like Geraldine Livre than her daughter, Max. Geraldine arrived in the magical village of Lampton with her infant daughter and created a bookshop from nothing. Even the magical beings of the quaint village raved about her uncanny ability to recommend the perfect book every time that would help her customers with a myriad of issues.
But The Tiny Magic Bookshop isn’t Geraldine’s story. It’s Max’s. And Max is not happy at all to have been called back to Lamplight Books after her mum’s untimely death. She doesn’t even know if she wants to run the bookshop, as she’s sure she can never be as talented as her mum was at choosing the perfect books to help people.
While I wanted to write a story about the wonderful cosiness of bookshops, I also didn’t want to shy away from the realities of losing someone we love and the difficulties of grief. I believe books can be comforting and healing, and I wanted to show that in The Tiny Magic Bookshop.
That means that every person (be they a human, selkie, or troll) who walks into Lamplight Books isn’t smiling and happy. Some of them are, and lots more are as they leave with arms full of books. But some people come to the bookshop because they need help. Max isn’t sure she’s capable of finding the right books for them, but she tries her hardest.
That is what I really wanted to write about: that books are there for us when we’re at our messiest. Books don’t shy away from big emotions and they are patient when we can barely understand ourselves. Books help us delve into our feelings and they heal our hearts.
The Tiny Magic Bookshop is my love letter to books, to bookshops and booksellers, and to all the readers who understand, like I do, the power of finding that perfect story.
The Tiny Magic Bookshop was published by HQ on 4 June 2026
