Painfully shy Juliet Dove has a slight temper problem. Overly-sensitive about her own retiring nature, she tends to react with quick, vicious words when placed under pressure. This, combined with the stress her poetry-loving family places her under, has put her on edge enough to earn the nickname “Killer.” Poor Juliet. Her troubles are just beginning. A chance visit to a mysterious magic shop leaves her in possession of a gorgeous ivory amulet. Worse still, once the amulet is put on, it can’t come off, and Juliet becomes the center of attention for every male she meets. For the girl who hates the spotlight, this is pure torture.

The plot thickens when a pair of talking rats show up to explain that Juliet’s become the pawn in a deadly game of the gods to spread chaos on Earth. Now Juliet, her siblings, and her newfound rodent friends have to play out the ending of an age-old story of love, desire, and regret, calling upon long-vanished gods to vanquish one diety who refuses to grow up.
This is the first of Bruce Coville’s Magic Shop books that I’ve read. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but what I found was a surprisingly entertaining, multi-layered story that moved right along in some unexpected ways. Jerome and Roxanne, the Immortal Rodents, stemmed from the sort of concept I dearly wish I’d thought of first, while the concept of the Magic Shop, a place where the unsuspecting visitor finds a magic item which changes his life, is an oldie but goodie that never grows stale in the right hands. Though this is the fifth in a series, you don’t need to read any of the others to understand it. Juliet Dove is actually one character I wouldn’t mind seeing again. I may have to go and find the previous books in the series now.