The Wren Who Bakes

Right Magic, Wrong Place! Some people find a home. Others have to bake one.

Ashby Wren comes from a family of hereditary witches. Their magic, passed through bloodlines across generations, is precise, architectural, beautiful.

His is not.

For nineteen years, every enchantment he's attempted has ended in destruction. A wall, a shed. a house.

Magic may be in his blood, but Ashby knows when it's time to accept the inevitable. Knowing he'll never be a proper Wren, he leaves home with a recipe book under his arm, a dart in his pocket, and a desire to forge a new future for himself.

What follows is a year in the small village of Kettlemoor. A place of iron-dark creek water, a postmistress who knows everything, a mountain that takes care of its own, and a handyman who keeps appearing to fix things Ashby didn't know needed fixing.

Kettlemoor is warm. It's unconventional. It's watching with the patience of a community that knows how to wait. Ashby has spent his whole life being known as the failure in a family of successes. He's good at managing what people see of him.

He is unprepared for a place that keeps looking until it sees the rest.

The Wren Who Bakes is a cozy fantasy novel about found community, magic that works differently than expected, the relief of being seen accurately, and a handyman who keeps showing up.