A fantastic romp through late 13th century England as a wife ends up nicking a local unhinged wizard's Grammarye, and is dealing with, among other things, an encroaching Goblin Market run by a girlboss, a plotting pot of basil, her ain't shit husband, and all the wild ongoings of discovering magic for yourself. Darkshire's humor is impeccable (but if you've played any of his one sheet RPGs during the pandemic you'd know that already), and the excerpts from the Grammarye are particularly wonderful. (I will note that the ARC rough on formatting in some places, but the version we received had notes directly to the printers that struck me as charming, so I'm fine with it.) Comes out this May, and highly recommended when it does.

In the best way, this is a 'for the vibe' book. The writing to me was inconsistent (as was the story at times); however, the premise of a witch with her companion pot of basil on a mandrake farm featuring a cat trying to protect a town from the goblins? What a vibe! I think the author might need to do some more edits and reviews of some of the sentences structures before publishing. I also dislike the footnotes, but that might just be personal preference. They tend to take me out of the story. Otherwise, this seems like a book that I would suggest people try at least before saying yay or nay.

Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire is a quirky and charming fantasy filled with adventure and wit. The story follows Isabella Nagg as she embarks on an unusual journey involving magic, intrigue, and a mysterious pot of basil. Darkshire’s writing is light-hearted and humorous, with a whimsical tone that makes the book enjoyable for readers of all ages. It’s an engaging and delightful read for fans of magical realism and fantasy with a touch of fun and unpredictability.

Isabella has a rather hard life on a farm that only seems to be able to grow mandrake roots near a cursed stone. There's this spell book with confusing footnotes and annotations that confuse her, but comes with a cat-like thing that might actually like her. Gradually Isabella grows (while causing magical havoc along the way). Funny, smart, Isabella's story is a delight.

Why can't I live on a cursed mandrake farm and study my magical books together with my eldritch cat and my talking plant? Is that truly too much to ask for? But maybe I should be careful with what I wish for, because Mrs. Isabella Nagg has all of the above, but she also has to keep up with a whole lot of annoying stuff. First of all, there is her useless husband who literally can't do anything by himself, and her donkey just keeps wandering off, and at this time of year the goblins crawl out of their holes and try to sell their tempting but lethal goblin fruit to everyone, you know how it is. And then her husband decides to steal the magic book of the town wizard, and of course that's Isabella's problem now too. But well, she might as well try a spell or two, and the wizard is nowhere to be found anyway, so why not take his entire book collection and the not-cat companion that comes along with it? Her first spell results in a sentient donkey and a talking pot of basil, but she has always liked the basil more than her husband, so it surely will be fine. The story unfolds from there, but it's hardly a straightforward plotline. Isabella might be the main character (and she is great), but there are also many other POV characters, and the story is overall more about the vibes than the plot. I personally loved reading about the odd little town of East Grasby where the sun is controlled by a beetle, and where the dead sometimes rise from their graves, and where a woman really does the most to turn the annual goblin market into a profitable business even though it will doom all the villagers. You might have picked up on it from my review, but everything here is a little silly. The narrator is witty and I smiled a lot throughout the book, but that doesn't mean that only light topics are mentioned here. I wouldn't call it exactly cozy, because there is death and the story literally starts out with a beheaded body, but it's also not high stakes and mostly unserious. I actually think that this book kinda nails the tone of these somewhat weird medieval tales, like they are collected in the "Decameron". I know some stories, but I haven't read it in its entirety (it's 100 tales total) and I never heard about the whole pot of basil situation. The reveal related to that was a surprise for me, but I guess it will not be if you already know the original story or the Keats poem. I know that this will not be everyone's cup of tea (or pot of basil, if you will), but I have nothing negative to say about this book. It also comes with some illustrations, footnotes and abstracts from the magic books, and that made for and unique and enjoyable reading experience. I will definitely pick up a physical copy upon release and I will highly anticipate future works by Oliver Darkshire.

Huge thanks to NetGalley and W. W. Norton & Company for providing a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

ISABELLA NAGG AND THE POT OF BASIL is a short novel about the titular character's foray into wizardry. She has an essentially helpless husband who only knows how to harvest mandrake leaves. Even then he's a miserable sod at it. One day he brings home the local wizard's "borrowed" spell book as payment for delivery of the mandrake leaves. Isabella tries to return it. However, she instead ends up learning how to perform spells with the help of a cat-like companion. Meanwhile, the goblins come to town to try to sell their famous fruit to the villagers as part of a rather nefarious scheme.

The official synopsis boasts plenty of alluring and quirky elements to draw in readers looking for something a little different. It's easy to feel sympathy for Isabella, whose only comfort is a pot of basil, despite her own grouchiness. The talking cat is blunt and matter-of-fact, which I found oddly endearing. One of the Nagg's animals becomes sentient, which broaches the question of how it might feel should it suddenly understand more than where its next meal comes from. What I found most interesting was the goblin's Ponzi scheme and what they actually are.

However, all these elements together didn't quite work together as well as I hoped. Isabella's constant rumination over her husband's uselessness became repetitive. And even though the story is about 250 pages, it felt longer than that. ISABELLA NAGG AND THE POT OF BASIL is supposed to be about self discovery and finding out what else life has to offer. And that happens in a roundabout way, but it felt rather anticlimactic and a little monotonous. There's also the fact this is a reimagining of her heroine in the Decameron, which I haven't read. So perhaps there are elements that I missed that otherwise would have added to my enjoyment.

There are also a lot of footnotes in this story. I found they added little to the plot and overall took me out of the story. They seem meant to add more whimsy to the story, but instead I grew rather impatient with them.

There are likely readers who can better connect with the overall grumpy yet minutely hopeful tone of the story. It didn't quite work for me. But check it out if you like somewhat nonsensical magical elements, folklore-ish magic, and talking cats.

This is a tale of dreary whimsicality. All the characters are deeply unpleasant and miserable, both to the reader and to each other. There are so many footnotes and tangents that I found it hard to follow the actual story. About halfway through, I began skipping all footnotes and that helped.

Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting through this book. I can objectively appreciate it, and I have no doubt some will love it! It’s simply not my cup of tea, which is okay. I found the story drawn out, and I wasn’t invested in any of the characters to care about what happened next, so I found myself dragging through this book. The writing is good and I can see the sense of humor, I just have a different sense of humor so it wasn’t all that funny to me either.

Isabella and Mr. Nagg (her husband) live quite a droll life and have the kind of marriage everybody fears (no love to the point they are basically enemies who have to live together). I liked Isabella well enough, but wasn’t invested enough to care, and no plot points were really all that interesting either. I straight up disliked Mr. Nagg because he is just an awful person, which is clearly intentional and meant to be funny, but I found that I just hated reading his chapters.

Overall, I can see why others would like this, but I do not have the right sense of humor to enjoy this one.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All thoughts are my own!

Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil was a quirky and cozy fantasy. It had magic, wizards, talking animals and plants, goblins, and a handful of beheadings; all of which, when combined made for a funny story. This was a fun, easy to read book that had me laughing out loud a number of times.

I'm giving it three stars because though it was enjoyable, I didn't find myself able to connect with the main character and was left with many questions at the end. There were a ton of footnotes throughout the book, which were all hysterical but broke up the reading in a way that was sometimes distracting.

Overall, though not my favorite cozy fantasy ever, I enjoyed this and would recommend it to others!

Is there such thing as *too* whimsical? Once upon a time I might have said no, but this story has led me to reconsider. Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil is a work of pure invention, almost an adult answer to Dr. Seuss. The world and the characters are endlessly quirky, but for me this charm slowly began to grow stale. I enjoyed the story most when it leaned into the more serious elements, some of which occasionally bordered on horror. However, the light=hearted tone of the prose was so at odds with these events, the attempts at levity sucking the gravity out of what could have been meaningful moments. However, many bonus points for including footnotes! I think all fiction can benefit from the inclusion of footnotes.

This cozy fantasy had me laughing out loud in places and thoroughly enjoying my time spent with Isabella. Anyone looking for a cozy wizard story will love this book.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC! I really do not like leaving negative reviews. This book was not for me unfortunately. I did not finish it. The ebook formatting makes it extremely confusing to read. There were a ton of formatting issues. The footnotes were also very confusing. I have read books with footnotes before and I liked them, I think it doesn’t work in an ebook format unfortunately. By the time I got to the footnotes I had already forgotten what they were referring to specifically. It also just felt like it was interrupting the flow of the story when that context could have just been added narratively? I was also just confused by the writing style. It did not jive with me, but other people seemed to have really enjoyed it. This seems like it’s targeted for a specific audience and I, unfortunately, was not the right person to review this.

I am very grateful to NetGalley and W.W. Norton for access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review. I can imagine there will be readers who will love this cozy fairytale, but unfortunately, it fell flat for me.

First, the positives. The writing style itself reminded me of the narrative style of T Kingfisher, as well as the characters who come off the page pretty well. The overall worldbuilding didn’t really work for me—there are some details, like the beetle pushing the sun across the world every day, which just don’t ever seem to matter in any meaningful way. I think these details were supposed to add to the quirky and lighthearted tone, but I think cozy fantasy can still have stronger, more meaningful world building that what was done here. And the frequent footnotes sacrifice coherence and flow for the sake of not-very-funny jokes and quirks.

There were parts of this book that I found really promising, but overall, the plot rambled, and I had to force myself to finish it. I do think there will be readers to whom the lighthearted nature and amusing cast of characters really appeal.

I have not read the Decameron, so I'm sure that I missed many references in this novel. I picked this up because I enjoyed Darkshire's memoir, Once Upon a Tome. I was less enthralled by this novel (but I also listened to the audio version of his memoir, so perhaps I would prefer the audio version of this book), but still enjoyed it. It was at times reminiscent of the Pratchett's Discworld books, and had a enough dry humor and interesting characters that would be likely to read addition novels set in this world.

I liked this quite a bit, but never got sucked into it deeply enough to say that I loved it. The grimayre and wizard concept complete with reinvention of self and name was excellent, and the grimalkin and basil/lice were fun. I did not like the beggarman living in a barrel — it felt rather elitist, not to mention childishly simplistic: a barrel, really? — and the Ponzi scheme villain felt too much a caricature, though I did like the donkey. I feel like it could have been condensed to a couple of chapters, and then expanded into a longer more interesting arc that allowed for character growth — almost a tv episode, rather than a book/series.

At any rate, it was fun and I enjoyed it well enough. My thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

What a strange, charming little cozy fantasy! I really enjoyed the story - it felt like a hug. It gives me Emily Wilde vibes, which is one of my favorite books. Well done Oliver Darkshire!

This was a cozy fantasy with some humor. I absolutely loved the cover, but the story itself just didn't work for me for some reason. I feel like I should have liked it, but maybe just wasn't in the mood for this kind of book right now. Also, the footnotes... sometimes entertaining, but ultimately ruined the flow of the story for me.

There's a lot of cozy fantasy being published these days, with huge fluctuations in originality and writing quality. Thankfully, "Pot of Basil" succeeds on both fronts: the prose is solid, and the plot has enough charm to scratch the cozy itch. It won't be winning any awards but is a welcome addition to the genre.

Thank you NetGalley! The title of this book is so alluring but the book itself was not. Isabella Nagg, a discontented housewife in a loveless marriage to a lazy drunkard, her companion a pot of basil. Sounds like a whimsical tale but you would be wrong. The synopsis claims of hilarity but this was also missing. A tale of misguided devotions, enslavement, temptations and many other aspects forced into a very small book. The story showed promise. A Wizard keeping the town of East Grasby safe from the goblin population and their poisoned fruit. He abruptly dies. Isabella takes over and the familiar, a gramalkin, unimaginably named Gramalkin becomes her assistant. A gray, bedraggled cat. When Mr. Nagg, as he is continually referred to, eats the goblin fruit, Isabella is determined to save him, as she always has. Then the story goes from fantasy to B movie horror flick. The writing is definitely an acquired taste. The author felt the need to interject his knowledge of vocabulary and slang sometimes in the same sentence. The addition of footnotes I found annoying and unwarranted. The substance could have been enfolded into the story itself or the intermittent “pages” of the Gramayre that could have served better purpose than randomly appearing. I really wanted to like this one but after finally finishing after struggling for 4 days, I just glad it was over.

This very cozy folktale-inspired fantasy will need the right audience because the tone could veer on pretentious to irreverent, but I found it thoroughly entertaining. It reminded me quite a bit of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, complete with charming but academic footnotes, perhaps too many of them and I didn't read all of them for this reason. But many put a smile on my face.

Turns out I'm not against all folktale and fairytale retellings - I just prefer ones that don't take themselves so seriously. A lot of them are annoyingly self-referential. This one was refreshing, and it was not a retelling - it was more like an whimsical homage. And this is not a marriage in crisis romance, though I think it had a happy ending - though romance traditionalists will not consider it a HEA. But this really is a couple you hope won't stay together. It was like romance flipped on its head. I am trying not to give spoilers, but it's safe to say this isn't a romance.

Isabella Nagg lives a lonely, resentful existence in a loveless marriage taking care of the ungrateful Mr. Nagg. The couple preside over a relatively useless mandrake farm. Mr. Nagg sells the mandrake leaves every year to a wizard, who this year isn't there. Hoping to still impress his wife, he steals a book of his Gramarye and brings it to her as a gift. She is instead upset at the theft and intends to return the book to the wizard. Along the way she inherits the whole Gramarye and a newfound sense of purpose. She bestows her most trusted companion, a pot of basil, with sentience, as well as a philosophical donkey, and has a new assistant, an ugly cat with an attitude.

The town is also plagued by a goblin market. Goblin fruit is a fungus that is poisonous to humans but profoundly tempting to people like Mr. Nagg. Hijinks ensue as Isabella learns a new craft.

There were stakes and things happened here, but no grand plot with a lot of action. But I never got bored. I was charmed by the extremely whimsical tone and the characters. I was rooting for the ending, but at first you think it's going to be a marriage in crisis romance. I'm glad it wasn't. I'm also glad this didn't go the female rage route because that would have killed the tone. Isabella was a great character, more like the perpetually annoyed and put-upon middle-aged woman who's had quite enough bullshit, please and thank you. Not everything needs to be female rage. I liked seeing an attitude closer to my own. Sometimes it's rage; sometimes it's just low-grade irritation with the world.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.