I’d never heard of this book, or its author. So I was quite surprised when we got almost fifty orders for it February. Turns out that Jessie Sylva is a “recovering lawyer” who just started writing. She lives in Canada with her wife and two cats. How To Lose A Goblin in Ten Days is her first novel. She calls it a “cozy fantasy [with an] emphasis on queer joy.”

The book is a very cozy romance. Pansy is a halfling girl who is a terrible farmer, but a very good cook. Her taste in furnishing runs to squeaky clean and excessively frilly. Ren is a non-binary goblin who loves good cooking. They can grow food anywhere, including in the dirt they bring inside the previously-abandoned cottage they’re forced to share with Pansy. Of course, halflings and goblins are natural enemies so clearly, one of them must move out within ten days. They argue. They try to trick each other. They eat delicious food together. They get a cat. There is only one bed.

The world of Pansy and Ren is inhabited by fantasy races drawn from Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons tropes. There is some magic, in the form of an ongoing vague war between wizards and demon lords, in which halflings and goblins are recruited (read: used) by opposing sides. But, unless you count being able to overcome decades of prejudice with a few well-chosen words—and possibly the alluring shape of someone’s ears—there isn’t much fantasy.

But the enemies-to-lovers romance is sweet and satisfying. The evil wizard who shows up eventually is hardly more evil than the busybody neighbor lady who hates goblins, though he is more prone to bloodshed. The disapproving townspeople are easily convinced along the path to acceptance, eventually. Pansy and Ren themselves are barely able to fight with each other. So, despite many obstacles, it is always comfortably clear that love will win in the end.