This month I’m keeping a promise by recommending a Cozy Fantasy novel set in a fortune-telling tearoom in 19th century Chicago. The Crescent Moon Tearoom by American author Stacy Sivinski was published in 2024 and is readily available in all the usual formats. It was the first volume in a series to be known as The Spellbound Sisters and a sequel, The Witching Moon Manor, is expected in October 2025. One warning – expect mouth-watering descriptions of cakes. So, do not read this book if you are on a strict diet.
Anne, Beatrix and Violet Quigley are red-haired triplets, identical except for the colour of their eyes. They are also witches with a strong talent for predicting the future. They inherited this skill from their mother, Clara, whose magic was so powerful that she seemed destined to join the Council that governs Chicago’s witches as their Diviner. Then Clara shocked her fellow witches by marrying an ordinary human and moving to a non-magical part of the city. It was a very happy marriage but she and her husband both died relatively young, as Clara had always known that they would. Since then, the orphaned Quigley sisters have transformed their father’s tailor’s shop into a tearoom where customers can come to enjoy excellent tea and cakes while having their fortunes told. The triplets live above the tearoom with a time-travelling cat called Tabitha (who is rather underused in the plot).
The Crescent Moon Tearoom has proved a great success with both human and magical clients. Anne blends the special teas, Violet makes many of the cakes, Beatrix does the accounts and the house itself (imbued with Clara’s magic) helps in surprising ways. Running the business is often exhausting but it provides a living for the sisters which allows them to stay together. This security is threatened when the tearoom is suddenly visited by three of the four members of the Council of Witches. The Council announces that the teashop will be closed down when winter arrives unless the sisters can use their Divining skills to help three elderly witches to discover their life’s task. Every witch has a task they must complete during their lifetime or they will be unable to pass over when they die and may become a harmful spirit.
The sisters are dismayed by this deadline, especially when the first witch sent to them proves very uncooperative. To make matters worse, a Hex Witch who was Clara’s closest friend warns the sisters that she can see a curse developing in their eyes. She thinks it may be related to something that Clara was very worried about when the triplets were small children. The sisters search for clues to the curse in their mother’s magical diary and in hidden parts of the house but each of them is distracted by a secret obsession. Beatrix is writing a novel, Violet is attracted to the risky life of a Circus trapeze artist and Anne is exploring a dangerous new aspect of her magic. Can the sisters still unite to save the Crescent Moon Tearoom?
In the summer of 2023, when I needed cheering up while waiting for an operation, I wrote about my frustrating search for truly enjoyable Cozy Fantasy novels. In the end, I picked Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes (Fantasy Reads July 2023) for its warmth and charm. Since writers and readers tend to divide into coffee-drinkers or tea-drinkers, I promised to recommend a tea-related novel at a later date. The series I originally had in mind didn’t quite live up to my expectations. As I noted in 2023, what I’m looking in Cozy Fantasy is heartfelt writing, characters I’ll enjoy spending time with, gentle humour, a plot involving only mild peril and preferably a love story with a happy ending. These qualities are all present in The Crescent Moon Tearoom, though the romantic elements aren’t dominant in this first book about the Quigley sisters. In addition there are ample servings of inventive and intriguing magic.
The Crescent Moon Tearoom itself counts as a leading character. In the heart of Chicago, a city not known for temperate weather, the tearoom has an implausibly large garden which produces flowers all year round and saturates an entire city block with the sweet scent of peonies. The house is self-cleaning, chooses its own internal decoration and room sizes and even insists on doing the washing-up at the end of the day. It reacts to each of the sisters, making itself bigger for energetic and restless Violet and creating private spaces for shy and secretive Beatrix. This ideal home does have a will of its own and sometimes expresses disapproval of the sisters’ actions with dirt and cobwebs or by nearly shaking pictures off the walls. The sisters are used to their extraordinary home but there is more to the Tearoom’s magic than they understand.
I’ve come across fortune-telling tearooms before in American literature so I suppose they were once popular, particularly with wealthy women with too much time on their hands. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume that the absurd idea of reading the future in the shapes of tea-leaves left in the bottom of a cup had been invented by storytellers. In fact it is a long established form of Divinition and a definite improvement on predicting the future by examining cracks on bones or the entrails of a sacrificed animal. The Quigley sisters make the process pleasant by serving a variety of teas, including orange pekoe, oolong, hibiscus and white peony, and pastries such as strawberry tarts, cinnamon buns, pumpkin spice cake and Soothsaying Shortbread. Part of the sisters’ skill is to choose the right tea for individual customers. Truth-Telling tea is one they rarely serve because of the emotional havoc it can cause. The sisters are well aware that most people only want to be told good news, so they have to find tactful ways of helping customers to make the best of their fortunes.
In the course of the story, Anne and her sisters use various other forms of Divination such as palm and tarot-card reading and looking into a crystal ball or a bowl of water. This last method evokes the image of Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters foretelling Macbeth’s blood-stained future – a reminder that fortune telling is not always innocent or harmless. Unlike most of the magic in Fantasy novels, Divination is something most readers will have encountered and perhaps tried in real life, even if it is only by reading a Horoscope. Some practioners of Divination are essentially Life Counsellors, as the Quigley sisters are for most of their clients, but any insight into the future, whether it is gained through magic or via collecting and analysing data, raises uncomfortable issues. Should you take drastic action now to prevent things that only might happen in the future? Could you enjoy the present if you knew that a tragic fate lay ahead of you?
In the fictional world of The Crescent Moon Tearoom, Diviners cannot predict their own future and that helps to keep them sane. There are rare exceptions and Anne discovers that she is one of them. The triplets may look nearly identical but they are shown to be very different people. Anne is the responsible one who manages the teashop and holds the family together. She has suppressed the fact that her magic is more powerful than that of her sisters. It is only when their home is under threat that Anne begins to seek and utilise glimpses of her own future but can she endure the mental and emotional strain of such unnatural knowledge? Violet seeks relief from her rather stultifying life in the Crescent Moon Tearoom by sneaking off to visit a circus where a handsome acrobat introduces her to the adrenaline-rush of flying above the ring. Personally, I’ve never wanted to run away to the circus (too much like hard work) so my favourite sister was imaginative Beatrix who loves storytelling but has no confidence in her talent until she gets a reaction from a prospective publisher that most authors can only dream about.
Nowadays there are so many novels about Found Family that it makes a pleasant change to read one about a genetic family and you can’t get more closely related than being identical twins or triplets. The Quigley Family are portrayed as exceptionally happy until the parents’ early deaths. The triplets seem enviably close and appear to live together in harmony in the sanctuary of their tearoom until a curse begins to drive them apart. As the story progresses, another view of things emerges. Is the very closeness they prize stifling the sisters’ development as individuals? Each of the triplets needs to find their own path through life. Ultimately, this is a book about a type of family love that is supportive without being possessive and that makes it a comforting read. So, if you need cheering up this summer, I prescribe The Crescent Moon Tearoom taken with a cup of Fortnum & Mason’s Rose and Pomegranate Tea and a slice of Lemon Drizzle cake (adjust to taste). Fantasy Reads is now on holiday until September.
Geraldine
July 2025