Be prepared to crave raspberry jam when reading this YA cozy fantasy by Sarah Beth Durst. It’s even dedicated “To Adam, with love and raspberry jam.” And if that’s not enough there are raspberry chapter heads. I had to go buy a jar of jam and a loaf of sourdough. True.
The story hits all the tropes of cozy fantasy:
Personal Problem: Kiela’s an introverted, orphaned librarian who fled the city of Alyssium, after working in the Great Library for many years, because a fire ravaged her library during an uprising. She escaped with her sidekick, Caz, a wise and sentient spider plant (and only friend) and several spell books which will bring about her demise if she gets caught with them. Now, she’s on the island of Caltrey where she was born and once lived in a charming cottage with her parents. After working in the library so long, she doesn’t know how to talk to people or make friends. The garden is wildly overgrown and the cottage needs a good cleaning. Plus where or where will I hide these contraband spell books?
Community Problem: “the magic is unbalanced, too concentrated in some areas and absent in others” (110). Weather manipulation by sorcerers? Climate change? Aha. The Emperor of Alyssium has been hoarding all the magic for years so the outer islands are in decline. Kiela wants to fix this problem using her salvaged spell books. To do that, she’ll need the help and support of the everyone on the island, especially when an Imperial Investigator arrives.
Idyllic Lifestyle: Kiela needs to make a living. When she notices a tangle of ancient raspberry bushes out behind the cottage, she uses a spell to “accelerate plant growth.” Soon she has so many big juicy raspberries she realizes the only thing to do is make jam. Of course, why not open a jam shop?
Romantic Subplot: a kind, handsome, young man lives nearby. Larran is a “wears a tool belt” builder type of guy who often strips off his shirt to dive in the sea and tend to his merhorses. His creatures help the community by driving the fish into the fishers’ nets. Due to the magical problems, his merhorses have stopped reproducing. Larran makes it known that he’s interested in Kiela, but Kiela doesn’t seem to trust or understand him. So a slow burn romance throbs beneath the surface. Thank god, he’s persistent and can keep a secret. It doesn’t hurt that he looks great swimming shirtless in the sea.
Quirky Characters: Bryn is a furry deer/goat-like creature who runs the yummy bakery and becomes Kiela’s friend and champion in record time. Eadie is her friendly centaur friend. There are winged cats and merhorses. And not long after they arrive, Kiela and Caz, the spider plant, create a sentient cactus by accident who communicates many thoughts with one syllable: “Meep!”
This is a “feel good” story, In fact the author says, I wanted to write a book that felt like a warm hug. As I wrote each chapter, I’d ask myself, Does this make me smile? —Sarah Beth Durst
The story won’t just make you smile, it will teach you about magic and spell casting. “Spells have to be cast with very specific words and ingredients” (95). It will appeal to your inner witch.
Durst is a masterful writer, lyrical and original. The cover is gorgeous and the book has violet-painted-edges, though I might have gone with raspberry myself. All in all, this book will entrance you, possibly even heal you.
But when she stepped out from the canopy of green, the blue smacked into her, and she stopped and just stared. It was the vastness of the blue that was so breathtaking, as well as the variation: the bleached blue-white of the sky near the sun, the deeper blue of the sky near the horizon, the slate blue of the clouds, the black-blue and green-blue and fathomless blue of the sea, all contrasted against the pale sand of the shore, the bright colors of the houses, and the dark green of the trees (90).
How beautiful is this cover? Art by Lulu Chen. Cover design by Angela Carlino. The book also comes with beautifully painted fore-edges.
This was my first foray into Young Adult Cozy Fantasy and it transported me right back to my childhood days of reading in the orchard beneath the apricot tree on hot summer afternoons. A Baltimore oriole made her nest there and it swayed in the breeze like a lady’s fuzzy silk stocking.
Cozy Fantasy is one of the newest trends and it comes with specific tropes, the most defining being: zero violence, an idyllic lifestyle, low tension, and a personal/community problem for the protagonist to solve. These stories are may-your-wishes-all-come-true kind of books that keep the reader in their grip without relying on murder and mayhem.
Calisa, our sixteen-year-old hero, leaves bustling New York and her cheating boyfriend, at the request of her two moms and arrives at her great aunt Zee’s inn in paradisical Vermont. Only The Faraway Inn is no paradise. It’s dirty and dilapidated. In fact, Calisa falls through the porch on her approach and gets stuck, much like Alice in Wonderland. Problem-solving is a key trait of the main character. Moreover, her ancient, crotchety aunt doesn’t know she’s coming and demands she leave. So much for a spending her summer holiday in the country. Calisa negotiates a three-day probation and decides to earn her worth by cleaning like mad and baking cakes for afternoon tea.
She also meets handsome Jack, who is the only employee at this huge inn, and is a little sad as his father’s gone missing. Their romance, of course, is flirtatious, never going beyond soft, warm kisses which are absolutely necessary in the moment, and remains secondary to the main problem. Keep the inn in business. With just the two of them, it’s something of a chore.
The story is scrumptious with just the right dose of calamity.
It reminded me very much of The Spiderwick Chronicles (ancient house, whispering voices, eccentric creatures) and Alice in Wonderland (a portal fantasy with its many doors that absolutely must not be opened.) Auntie Zee insists upon two rules: don’t ask questions and don’t open doors. Of course, we know what that means.
The inn is populated by eccentric characters from other realms: a moving statue, a magic teakettle, fireplaces that seem to light themselves, and exotic creatures—a dryad, a small dragon who takes to Calisa, and a lovely gent who’s a night owl and whips up decadent hot chocolate with vanilla.
“Standing at the counter amid the stacks of pots and bowls was a fifty-to-sixty-year-old man, as thin as a skeleton, with wild white hair that poked out at all angles and skin so pale he looked nearly translucent. He was wearing all black—a black turtleneck, black slacks, and a single black gem earring—and humming “Ain’t No Sunshine” as he poured milk into a bowl” (46).
With brings me to food porn. What’s more cozy than tea and cakes? Maybe mac and cheese? Details. It’s all in the details. Calisa begins with pancakes; after all, it is a bed and breakfast, there are guests to feed, and Jack shows her umpteen varieties of locally-made maple syrup (blueberry, salted caramel, elderberry among them.) Without technology (another trope) she must rely on an old cookbook to learn to bake. No cell phones, no internet, no computers, not even an old television. This in itself intrigues me.
My only complaint is that the story seemed to have a long, drawn-out ending as every question posed and every thread pulled was thoroughly tied. I drifted off to sleep feeling, well, cozy, and yet excited to try another of Durst’s books, The Spellshop. Hah. I may have to give this genre a try myself.
If you’ve never heard of Cornelia Funke, you must find this book and read it. Funke has been called the German J. K. Rowling. Both women have written a fantastical series featuring a child protagonist. Funke’s is a trilogy: Inkheart (2003), Inkspell (2005), and Inkdeath (2007). The “ink” is a clue that these are stories about books and people who love books—people like me and you. This translation from the German by Anthea Bell is quite well done.
“Only in books could you find pity, comfort, happiness—and love. Books loved anyone who opened them, they gave you security and friendship and didn’t ask anything in return; they never went away, never, not even when you treated them badly.”
Funke was working as an illustrator and social worker in Germany when her son asked her to write a story about people who come out of books. We readers love to slip inside stories ourselves—in a figurative way—but imagine having Hermione Granger or Katniss Everdeen suddenly standing beside you? Or worse, imagine the Death-Eaters hovering over your bed!
Meggie is a twelve-year-old girl Funke named after her daughter. She gave her a wonderful father, who Meggie calls “Mo” (short for Mortimer) with a fantastical gift. Mortimer Folchart is a Book Doctor, a bookbinder/restorer and great lover of books. These words are etched on a metal plaque on the door to his workshop:
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
But Mo is also something else. He was nicknamed Silvertongue by the characters he read out of Inkheart.
“Mo could paint pictures in the empty air with his voice alone.”
His gift comes with a price.
While reading Inkheart aloud nine years before, Mo accidentally pulled out three eccentric characters created by Italian author, Fenoglio. Capricorn is one of literature’s nastier villains. Basta is a superstitious, knife-wielding thug. And Dustfinger is a loveable fire-eater with a strange horned marten.
But, at the same time, Mo read Meggie’s mother, Theresa, INTO the book, and they lost her. After that horrific mistake Mo’s refused to read aloud ever again. He fears losing his daughter too. Capricorn destroyed all copies of Inkheart except the one he keeps for himself. He does not want to be read back into the book.
Like any good villain, Capricorn has his own agenda.
The tale begins in Germany where Mo and Maggie live. Dustfinger arrives with a warning: Capricorn is hunting Mo. He’s discovered another third-rate reader who’s read out some characters, but all have flaws. His reading is just not up to snuff. Capricorn has enough thugs and now wants treasure. Unflawed treasure. Pirate treasure. Gold. Mo and Meggie flee to northern Italy to take refuge at Meggie’s great aunt Elinor’s mansion full of books. Elinor is a collector and books are her world.
“A famous writer once wrote, ‘An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher, or a magician—but the magician, the enchanter, is in the ascendant.”
Mo is so obsessed with finding a copy of Inkheart and reading his wife home, they track down old Fenoglio to see if he has some stashed away. The charming old man joins them on their journey.
“Inkheart.” Fenoglio rubbed his aching back. “Its title is Inkheart because it’s about a man whose wicked heart is as black as ink, filled with darkness and evil. I still like the title.”
Eventually, they all end up imprisoned in Capricorn’s village in southern Italy. When Meggie reads Tinkerbell out of Peter Pan, she realizes she’s inherited Mo’s gift.
Unfortunately, so does Capricorn.
Allusions to classic literature paint the story along with much talk about books and reading. Wonderful quotes from our favourite children’s stories begin each chapter. This is a story to sink inside—not literally, of course—but to fall asleep with while you’re wrapped safely in words and soft quilts.
Is there anything in the world better than words on the page? Magic signs, the voices of the dead, building blocks to make wonderful worlds better than this one, comforters, companions in loneliness, keepers of secrets, speakers of the truth … all those glorious words.”
Cornelia Funke with her children
Inkheart was made into a movie featuring Brendan Fraser in 2008. Although it was produced by Cornelia Funke, I really don’t want to spoil things by watching it. This story is all about the written word and I can’t see how a film could do it justice.
I recently found a used hardcover of Inkspell, with Funke’s illustrations, in my local Indie bookstore, and now, like Mo, I’m searching for the rest of the trilogy. I just read Inkheart on Libby so I’d be ready for book two. If you see any other hardcover copies in thrift stores, do let me know. Like Elinor, I’m beginning to build my library of book loves.
This terrifying twisted tale, set at a fancy boarding school in Virginia, USA, will keep you reading until the bitter end. Why? Because, well, you just have to know what’s really going on. Are these macabre monsters real? And if so, how will they be contained?
CG Drews has a talent for creating gruesome Young Adult stories. After reading Hazelthorn (2025) I was left wanting, so dug into this one (2024). The writing isn’t quite as lyrical but it’s still a strange, melancholy love song wrapped up in vines, thorns, flowers, blood, ink, and assorted greenery that invades the bodies of her adolescent victim. Drews must be a gardener or the child of one.
Andrew is a fragile, sensitive boy who writes dark fairy tales. Thomas—the wild, fierce boy Andrew loves—draws vile monsters, the creatures from Andrew’s stories. Dove, a studious young woman with her whole life mapped out, is Andrew’s twin sister. These three have been inseparable since Dove and Andrew arrived from Australia when they were twelve to study at Wickwood Academy. But this year, their graduating year, things are different.
Dove is keeping her distance. She’s preparing for a world beyond Wickwood, while Andrew seems to be fading into the forest. Feeling stuffed full of moss, he can’t eat. Thomas’s abusive parents were brutally murdered and everyone whispers that he killed them. When the boys venture into the off-bounds wild wood, they discover monsters everywhere—monsters created in Andrew’s imagination and brought to life by Thomas’ drawings. Feeling responsible, they take it upon themselves to keep the secret, destroy Thomas’s sketches, and kill the monsters. They must keep them from getting into the school.
Even as I turn the last page I’m left wondering. What really happened? The thing is: we see the story through Andrew’s eyes and he’s an unreliable narrator struggling with first love and his identity. Though he’s in love with Thomas, Andrew thinks he might be asexual. Yet he yearns for his first kiss. From Thomas. Only Thomas. And as the story progresses, Andrew hears other things from other people—things he doesn’t want to hear from people who don’t believe in the monsters, compassionate adults who want to send him home to recover.
It’s complex, twisted, and tragic. Note that the book comes with content warnings: “blood/gore, body horror, panic attacks, grief, eating disorder, bullying, and self-harm.”
The book itself—I read the hardcover— is an artistic creation with an entire page of editors and creative designers behind it, and obviously buckets of money. I love this trend to create pretty keepsake books. Full page sketches of Thomas’ monsters inspire chills. Yet the fairytale that weaves through the book—pale text embedded on a dark grey page—is printed in a font so fine and fancy, these old eyes can’t read it. Perhaps I missed something there. Artsy, but ineffective. This is a good reminder to always choose a legible font. Note: It’s easier to read in a digital image than on paper.
Psychological horror. A twisted love story. A feast of friendship and fidelity.
“His breathing evened out, but he made no move to get up. Andrew didn’t care, not while they still touched. He craved Thomas’s affection, with an intensity that left him dizzy. If he never had more, he had this.
It was almost worth being ripped apart by monsters” (109).
As I read Hazelthorn I searched for the right words to describe it: unique, original, addictive, disturbing, psychologically horrific … tragic. It’s has “a terrible beauty” as Keats or Yeats might have said. It’s the most superb gothic romantasy I’ve ever read—something Byron and Shelley might have devoured. Really, words are inadequate. You’ll have to read it yourself to understand and feel its effects. Know it will haunt you.
Every line is strangely lyrical, painted with intensity and shadowed with darkness, and yet, the story ends wrapped in ribbons of sunlight. If you open to any page, you’ll find something quoteworthy.
“He is not a bird meant for flight; he is broken wings and forgotten petals left to dry between pages of an old book and he doesn’t know how to believe he could be anything else” (259).
Evander. The boy on the cover smothered by thorns. Locked up and drugged for years in a musty room in a billionaire’s mansion—confused and imprisoned until one day someone unlocks his door and sets him free.
Laurie. The billionaire’s grandson. Beautiful, sarcastic, witty, hurting, desperate, desolate. The object of Evander’s affection, though Evander hates him, justifiably. Laurie attacked Evander when they were ten, beat him and cut him and tried to bury him alive in the garden.
Now they’re seventeen living in a mansion choked by gardens and greenery capable to murder. Grasping at an insane obsession.
And the billionaire’s been murdered. Laurie’s grandfather. Evander’s jailer.
The cover says it all. Evander, embraced by the garden, his flesh ravaged by thorns, his blood oozing. Since the garden had a taste of his blood, it wants him back. The theme of this story is guilt eclipsed by greed. You won’t believe it.
But the message is love.
This is Young Adult Romantasy at its finest … and darkest.
Reader Beware: This fast-paced Young Adult novel contains several graphic, disturbing scenes of indescribable gore and violence. Actually, I shouldn’t say “indescribable” because it’s Sutherland’s sensory play-by-plays that push it over the edge into the HORROR realm, giving Stephen King a run for his money. Quill & Quire’s called him Canada’s answer to R.L. Stine. If the macabre is not to your taste you might want to give it a pass, but if you’re intrigued by Halloween horror, Stranger Things, and masterfully crafted suspense, read on.
This rapid-fire tale is as highly emotional as its teenage protagonists. Seventeen-year-old Joana, her thirteen-year-old brother Peter, and her troubled father are on the run—not from evil humans but from the voices that haunt their tortured father. The Whisperings.
“They whisper in my ear in the middle of the night as I sleep. They murmur, mumble, and mutter, often nothing more than a stream of indecipherable nonsense. Clear words sometimes jump out of the noise, like fish flying from the water, and sometimes the voices yell. But they all want, and need, and demand”(53).
Every time The Whisperings take hold, the Guests pack their car and drive off to find a new town. This nomadic existence started thirteen years ago when Joana’s mother was violently murdered in their family home. (Note: her horrific murder is described in vivid detail later in the story.) Now, they’ve arrived in the small town of Burlington, Vermont and rented the dank basement of a sprawling (and crawling) Victorian house from old Mrs. Cracknell. It’s a fixer-upper with reduced rent because Dad’s a handyman. It’s hard to keep a job when you’re constantly running from the voices in your head.
Known locally as “The Kill House”, it’s alive, not only with the spirits of a family torn asunder by a tragic murder-suicide, but with creepy insects that natter in the walls. “Ta-tump, ta-tump, ta-tump!” You see, Abraham Keil, the depraved murderer, was an entomologist at the local university. Centipedes and spiders lurk in these musty pages, and a Death Watch Beetle sings Joana into her closet, where she bashes in the wall and discovers the red room. Use your imagination.
If that’s not enough, there’s a creepy little beetle dead-centre every time we break scenes that makes me jump even though I know it’s coming.
When Joana tumbles from a red rock cliff, narrowly escaping with her life, she awakens in hospital with the ability to see ghosts herself. The Whisperings have somehow been transferred to her via a concussion. Woven through the story is a B-plot love story that offers some relief from the nail-biting suspense. Joana meets Willem, a quirky, bookish boy who works at the local diner and christens her, Pumpkin Spice on account of her first latte. How sweet. Will they both survive the hauntings?
Joana’s been on the run since she was four years old and wants nothing more than to put down roots in Burlington, an old-timey village that feels like home to her. She loves to run, and this talent earns her a place on the school rugby team. Things seem to be working out, what with rugby and Willem, until they’re not.
Canadian author Joel A. Sutherland is the award-winning author of Scholastic Canada’s Haunted Canada series (now a graphic novel in development for television). This “master of the macabre” lives in Ontario with his family, but sets his books south of the border in Vermont. His novel, Summer’s End, was a Red Maple Award Honour Book. The Whisperings follows his debut YA novel, House of Ash and Bone, a novel of ghosts and witches, also set in Vermont. He received a Masters of Information and Library Studies from Aberystwyth University in Wales.
In the Afterword, Sutherland explains that horror stories “teach us how to defeat the thing hiding under our bed, the monster lurking in our closet, or the voices only we can hear. They give us the tools we need to face our fears. They remind us that we’re not alone; when the lights go out, we all get a little scared. But in the morning, the sun always rises” (289). Well, maybe not for ALL the characters in this book. If you’re craving frenzied goosebumps, this may be the book for you.
