The Crescent Moon Tearoom: After a slow start, this cozy fantasy soars

The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski

I finally found a cozy, small-stakes fantasy that simply and completely entertained me. 2024’s The Crescent Moon Tearoom, by Stacy Sivinski, resonates as much with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women as it does with the CW’s seminal 1990s TV show Charmed (except no one wastes away from consumption). Three witchy sisters deal with a thriving business, the Witch Council and its demands, and their own growing powers.

To be fair, the cozy subgenre isn’t my cup of tea. (Yes, I meant to do that). Even so, I keep picking them up, thinking I will enjoy the small-stakes escapism. So far, the other “cozies” I’ve read have disappointed me with cavalier indifference to plot, or flattened, one-note characters. The Crescent Moon Tearoom introduces three sisters, triplets, who inherited the legacy of their powerful witch mother. She defied convention and married a human. After their parents’ deaths in an accident, Anne, Violet, and Beatrix turn their house into a tearoom, where they each use their magic powers to tell fortunes. The tearoom is highly successful, and the sisters are rubbing along nicely without thinking much about their own futures, when a delegation from the Witch Council visits them. The Council gives them a nearly impossible assignment. If they fail, the Council will insist they close the tearoom. At the same time, their mother’s dearest friend reveals to the sisters that they are under a curse that will drive them apart forever.

Once I got past the expository though beautifully descriptive beginning, the conflicts began to introduce themselves, and the sisters emerged as individuals. Sivinski provides a lot of fun in the book, with the time-traveling cat and the sentient magical house. When Violet, the clumsy and impulsive sister is drawn to the nearby circus, and Beatrix, the shy daydreamer, dares to send one her stories to a publisher, the tension slowly, steadily increases, as does the pressure on Anne, the strongest precognitive sister, and the one most wedded to the house and sisterly stability.

Stacy Sivinski

Those are the stakes in the story and they are convincing. Short chapters and nicely developed prose speed the book along. Sivinski is devoted to descriptions that tickle all the senses, so there are a lot of scents and tastes in the book, and several are magical. While it was a reach at times, I enjoyed the commitment. The visual descriptions are lovely throughout. As the sister struggle, internally and externally with their choices, the interactions with the three witches they’ve been assigned to help are humorous and heartwarming.

Quibbles? Oh, yes. I don’t see how these young women make a living running a tearoom, given how much crockery they break over the course of the story. And if I were the magical house, I would file a complaint with the Magical House Union over how badly these sisters, especially Violet, treated me. At one point, a decision that Anne makes (definitely needed for the plot) is nowhere near well-enough supported for me. Still, I could overlook all of that and enjoy the book for what it was. Sivinski knows she is writing a “cozy” but she shows respect for her audience here, and doesn’t cut a lot of corners.

I didn’t know this was the first book of a series, but of course we never learn how the sisters’ parents died so there may be a story there, and Tabitha, the time-walking cat did nothing in this book. I wouldn’t mind seeing her be more than a witchy ornament.

With The Crescent Moon Tearoom, you know what you’re getting. If you want a light, escapist few hours with no-calorie scones, tea, and appealing characters, consider The Crescent Moon Tearoom.