By the cover and title, The Elegant Courtly Life of the Tea Witch looks like a mildly entertaining cozy fantasy. Remy is a tea witch, meaning she can magically make perfect tea, which o the one hand is enough that she gets to work in the royal palace, but on the other hand classifies her as basically a servant. Remy seems a little lazy and not minding this, but as you might guess, there’s more to her and her situation (mostly just hints in volume 1). Remy however for some reason attracts the attention of the first princess of the country, exactly why is a little unclear, but Princess Stella insists on wanting to be friends and hang out. Remy wants to avoid the attention. Remy seems to also be friends with fellow lowly mage Alicia, basically the glorified magic gardener, except it’s pretty clear about 2/3 of the way through that Alicia is way more than she lets on, meaning Remy probably is too, we just don’t quite know how or why yet.
There’s a lot of mild comedy in Remy trying to avoid attention but still take pride in her tea (which seems to mean both the beverage and the meal). There’s also some political mystery/threat, hints about backstory, and general other potential tropes being set up (like marriage for the princess, spies, mages who fought in the wars now past trying to adjust to desk work, etc.).
The one problem I have with this story is that the final part of volume 1 ends up with Stella and Remy going to visit the local downtown, which both of them end up referring to repeatedly as a “date”. The problem is that Stella is explicitly aged as 12 years old, and Remy has to be at least 18 if not slightly older. If it were just Remy waiting to preserve Stella’s childhood, which she insists she is, it would be one thing, but even the hint of it being more than a guardian/protectee connection is a little off-putting. I saw a few reviews of volume 2 that suggest that romance is an option, and yeah, no. A little sapphic tension is well and good, but not when half of that isn’t even a teen yet.