The Evergreen Conservatoire of Botanical Witchcraft is off limits to anyone without magical gifts.

But Thalia Sylvestre has just landed herself a prestigious job as an assistant in the conservatoire's library and herbarium, granting her rare access to this unique repository of botanical witchlore.

It's Thalia's perfect job: surrounded by the gilt-edged leaves of books and the sunlit leaves of plants. Most importantly, it gives her the resources she needs to research, in secret, a cure for the curse that afflicts her twin sister Hebe.

But what Thalia doesn't count on is August.

August Hawthorne is a post-graduate research student from a distinguished line of botanical witches. He is unbearably standoffish. And he is constantly getting in the way when Thalia's trying to conduct top-secret curse research. It's almost as if he, too, is up to something . . .

As Thalia and August grow closer, secrets will be revealed, hearts will be worn on sleeves and curses will (hopefully) be broken. But at what cost?