It’s been a while since I’ve last read a book and immediately had to write out how I felt about it… and yet saying that, I’m not sure I can put into words just how magical a story this was.

Reading the epilogue, I genuinely, for a moment, considered if there really was a magical world that Clover was encouraging me to come find. That she was real, that her story actually happened. I don’t think a book has ever done that to me before; ‘Magic still isn’t common knowledge, but it’s less and less secret. There are whispers on the street now, books of magic left in libraries and in old bookstores where someone looking for them might them… Most people don’t want to know, or need to know, but one by one, the ones who do come to seek us out.’ I know this is a common enough construct in stories featuring secret magic societies, but it did make me stop for a moment and wonder…  what if there really is a secret magic world and I could actually join it if I could just find them? Maybe that’s why there are so many stories about them?

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door is the story of Clover Hill. She lives on a farm in the shadow of Pendle Hill and is the eldest daughter, and as such has a great many responsibilities to her family and their livelihood. She dreams of one day being a teacher, a dream her older brother and best friend Matthew encourages, but it clashes with the guilt of needing to help out on the struggling farm. When WWI breaks out, it tears apart their world in more ways than you’d normally expect; for the Hill family, it brings along the discovery of the world of magic.

Kept secret by the Families, Clover must battle against prejudices not only against her sex but her class as she’s afforded a scholarship to the magical university of Camford. There, her goal is to research a cure for the curse that struck her brother during an attack from a fae in Amiens. Fae magic is now banned, along with the studying of it, but Clover discovers in Camford that she is not the only one researching this forbidden subject.

So we have a crumbling magical Oxbridge-inspired institution; an unlikely friend group studying and performing magic they absolutely shouldn’t with more at stake than simple expulsion should they be caught; and post first world war Britain. It was a heady mix that utterly transported me. I’ve been hooked on Agatha Christies lately for that nostalgic feel of times gone by, and found Faerie Door satisfied that itch perfectly. There were elements of Downton Abbey but if they could do magic. I completely bought into this world and I’m already missing it a great deal. The only other book of H. G. Parry’s I’ve read is The Magician’s Daughter, and an aspect of that I loved was the world building and setting; Faerie Door has cemented for me the fact that Parry is a vivid portrayer of magical worlds that you can completely lose yourself in.

I was Clover Hill, bright and hardworking and good at drawing but nothing special, and certainly not a witch. Who was I to force my way in here, where nobody wanted me? But looking at Camford opening in front of me like a story waiting to be read, I knew I needed to be here.

The above quote is from quite early in the book, and that line, like a story waiting to be read, hooked me so strongly. It just encapsulated everything facing Clover so perfectly, it surmised the situation so utterly for me, that I was hopelessly invested in her from that point on and would have stepped through any faerie door for her. It’s a true skill to make your characters believable and relatable to the degree that the reader believes in them, connects to them, misses them when you put the book down; and this was certainly the case for me. Clover is a complex person so well realised; she’s flawed, and she recognises her flaws and doesn’t deny their existence. It was quite refreshing to read a protagonist with that level of self awareness, she reminded me a lot of M. L. Wang’s protagonist from Blood Over Bright Haven in that regard. She is able to admit to herself that whilst on the surface she has left home because she had to, because she was doing it all to save Matthew but beneath that, she’s very much there for herself. Because she wants more from life than toiling on the farm.

It would be tempting to categorise this as a Dark Academia; they’re in a university, they’re scholars, they’re researching, and dark things happen to them. But there’s an element of the sinister in Dark Academia that was absent here. Likewise, it has cosy and comforting elements you’d find in Light Academia, but the stakes are just a little too high for that label. It takes the best elements of both and fuels an incredibly transportive and escapist story. It reminded me a great deal of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke; that alternate history, dealing with the fae, nebulous worlds just a shimmer of moonlight away…

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door is a story that is going to stay with me for a long time, its echoes will play on my mind. Parry’s writing will sweep you away and bring to life the most wondrous, mysterious, captivating tale. I can’t wait to come back to this author for more.

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door is available now. You can order your copy on Bookshop.org