There are books that feel like arriving somewhere, and then there are books that are genuinely about arriving somewhere. The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst is both, and that is not a coincidence. It is the kind of story that begins with a collapsed porch plank and ends with something quietly larger than what it started: a girl who came to escape and found that the escape itself was just the opening act.
Following her beloved The Spellshop, Durst returns to the cozy fantasy genre with characteristic warmth and wit, this time trading her spell-laden bookshop for a crumbling Vermont bed-and-breakfast with a secret strange enough to crack the whole world open.
A Brooklyn Girl, a Rundown Inn, and Far Too Many Questions
Sixteen-year-old Calisa arrives at the Faraway Inn carrying a broken heart and very sensible revenge logic: if she cannot be near her cheating ex-boyfriend, she cannot think about him. Rural Vermont, far from Brooklyn, seems like the solution. Her great-aunt Zee’s bed-and-breakfast, on the other hand, does not quite seem like anything. It is lopsided, ivy-strangled, nearly empty of guests, and presided over by an old woman who greets Calisa with something close to: you can stay one night, and then please leave. The porch collapses when she steps on it. Within minutes, she is stuck in a hole, discussing cheese with a handsome groundskeeper’s son named Jack, who is carrying a stone gargoyle on one shoulder.
Durst drops readers directly into Calisa’s narration, and it is clear immediately that this is a voice worth following. She is sharp without cruelty, self-deprecating without exhausting herself or the reader. Her heartbreak sits as a real and present weight, not a vague dramatic motivation. When she cleans bathrooms with vengeful dedication or thinks about her ex while pulling weeds, it carries the specificity that comes from genuinely understanding how grief and distraction operate together.
What This Novel Gets Beautifully Right
A Voice That Earns Every Page
Calisa’s internal monologue is the engine of this book, and it rarely misfires. She is funny the way people are funny when they are nervous and self-aware: accidentally, imprecisely, often at her own expense. She falls through the porch on arrival. And she names a winged lizard Steve because it simply feels right. She attempts to appear responsible in front of her great-aunt and fails within minutes.
The supporting cast earns real affection too. Mulligan, the theatrical, skeletal guest who speaks in borrowed tragedy and makes extraordinary hot chocolate, is a recurring delight. Kendra, the imperious woman who puts salt in her tea and expects everyone to understand why, terrifies and somehow also amuses. Then there is Steve himself, who mostly lies in the sun and hisses at things he disapproves of, and delivers more than words can account for.
A Magical Concept That Fits the Story It Lives In
Durst holds the inn’s central secret back long enough to give its reveal genuine weight. Once it lands, it reframes everything the reader has already witnessed. The inn is not a school for chosen children or a tunnel to one specific elsewhere. It is a nexus: a place where each door opens onto a different world, and the guests who return year after year are not from Vermont or anywhere near it.
What makes the concept resonate beyond novelty is that it mirrors the book’s emotional logic exactly. The inn exists as a place of refuge, specifically for those who need to step away from their own lives and breathe. That is why Calisa is there. That is why each guest has come. The magic and the meaning line up without strain.
Heartbreak Handled With Real Honesty
Durst does not treat Calisa’s pain as a plot device to be tidied up. A midnight kitchen scene with Mulligan, over homemade hot chocolate, in which Calisa admits she is not grieving her ex so much as grieving who she believed he was and what she thought they had built together, is among the most emotionally honest passages in recent YA fantasy. The book quietly insists that acknowledging hurt is not the same as drowning in it.
Where the Inn Could Use Some Renovation
The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst is a warm and satisfying read, but it is not without gaps.
The middle section loses momentum. As Calisa bakes, cleans, and piece-by-piece assembles the picture of what the inn really is, the novel relies on accumulation rather than forward movement. For readers who want narrative urgency, this stretch may require patience, even when the smaller moments within it are often genuinely charming.
Key supporting figures stay frustratingly opaque. Kendra and Mulligan carry enormous personality in every scene they appear in, yet neither receives enough page time to feel fully realized. Both gesture toward histories that feel rich, and neither delivers on that promise. Given how compelling they are to read, the relative thinness of their full arcs is a genuine missed opportunity.
The romance between Calisa and Jack is sweet and low-pressure, well-suited to the book’s gentle rhythm. It is also very familiar. The slow-burn dynamic plays out predictably. There is nothing wrong with it, but there is nothing surprising about it either.
The Cozy Fantasy Promise, Kept
These are real criticisms, but they sit within a book that knows what it wants to be and largely delivers. The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst is not reaching for most ambitious or most complex. It is reaching for most comforting: the reading equivalent of raspberry maple syrup on fluffy pancakes, on a morning after rain, with the mountains visible through the window.
The atmosphere is consistent. The details are sensory and specific, from the dried lavender in the guest rooms to the way the apple tree looks against the mountains at dawn. Durst is skilled at creating spaces readers want to inhabit rather than simply observe. Spending time in this book genuinely feels like spending time in the inn.
Readers Who Love These Books Will Feel at Home
- The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst: her previous novel and a natural companion read for anyone who responds to cozy magic, emotional repair, and a setting that feels like sanctuary
- Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree: for the found family, slow-burn romance, and refuge-built-from-the-ground-up spirit
- The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune: shares the setting-as-sanctuary logic and a quietly beating emotional core
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers: for readers who want fantasy thoughtful and genuinely unhurried
- One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston: YA-adjacent magic as metaphor, a protagonist reassembling herself piece by piece
Worth the Trip
The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst is not a perfect book, but it is a generous one. It offers warmth, humor, and a world that feels good to spend time in. For anyone who has ever needed somewhere to go, somewhere safe and strange and a little bit falling apart, the Faraway Inn has a room waiting.
Bring an appetite. The pancakes alone make a convincing argument.