The Art of Charming a Changeling by Sylvie Cathrall

Posted on July 6, 2026 by pagesofjulia

A plucky art conservator must travel into Fairy lands to save her job and a dreamy Fairy imprisoned in a painting.

The Art of Charming a Changeling is an endearing, enthralling fantasy-romance by Sylvie Cathrall, whose imagination takes readers through Folk and Fairy lands, into a painting, and back again.

Florrie Hyverfell loves her work as an art conservator. It’s people she finds challenging. Constantly arranging her face, rehearsing conversations ahead of time, seeking out comforting textures, and managing her interactions with the world exhaust her. She feels fortunate to be employed by Prince Ardant at the Commonplace Palace Museum, where she cares for his extensive collection. He even shares her passion for Fairy paintings, which have become embarrassingly outmoded. The painting he cares the most about is The Resolute Portrait of Vibrant Lord Vernal Mauve Among the Ruins; but to her dismay, Florrie quickly determines it has been replaced by a Fairy forgery. Worse, the counterfeit painting is holding hostage a changeling, a minuscule, near-perfect copy version of Lord Vernal Mauve, who asks that she call him Vern.

Florrie feels a little overwhelmed. According to the Conservators’ Code (which she has memorized), “one must only introduce the mere possibility of a counterfeit after acquiring at least five forms of incontrovertible evidence.” To save her job, and to help Vern escape from the beautiful but closed world of his painting, Florrie is compelled to find the original stolen painting. To do so, she must travel into Fairy lands, where Folk seldom travel. Meanwhile, there is the utter allure and magnetism of Vern, and does he have tiny, impossibly adorable dimples?

Cathrall (A Letter to the Luminous Deep) invites readers into a curious world in which Folk and Fairies have parted ways, with Folk generally preferring simpler technologies (rejecting levitating carts because “nothing feels so real as a wheel”) and eschewing Fairies and their overly embellished art. Finding herself attracted to Vern presents another layer of difficulty to a woman who frequently struggles to find her way. But Florrie is stronger than some might think.

The Art of Charming a Changeling offers an absorbing foray into an imaginative setting populated by art-focused princes, haughty collectors and conservators at odds with one another, fanciful Fairies, and the occasional predatory duck. It contains a sweet and cozy romance, a woman’s journey of self-actualization within a society that undervalues her, and a whimsical fantasy of changeling art. It also features a quest, for those seeking adventure. This first in a planned series will leave all sorts of readers hungry for more.

This review originally ran in the June 23, 2026 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 seed-loaves.

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Thistlemarch by Moorea Corrigan

Posted on June 15, 2026 by pagesofjulia

This was a compelling, engrossing read – not always quite a pleasure, because despite the presence of faeries, there was a lot of darkness to this tale. But it was absolutely rewarding.

Thistlemarch is historical fiction, set just at the end of World War I in rural England. We meet Mouse on a train: after serving as a nurse in France, she is on her way home to the estate called Thistlemarch, outside the village of Tithe. Her dear cousin Bertie was killed at the Somme. Her dear brother Roger lies in a hospital bed, raving, shouting, rarely recognizing her. Her uncle, holder of the estate, has also died. Mouse was always looked down upon by the proper, lordly wing of the family: her mother had the temerity to marry an Irish gardener, and so the girl who would be called Mouse lived in a room that would be called the Matchbox, tucked away. By a twist of fate, it falls to Mouse, disregarded niece, to inherit – but only on a seemingly impossible condition.

Faeries disappeared more than one hundred years ago; much as Mouse has always loved the tales, she has put away her childish hope of ever meeting the magical beings who once blessed the now dilapidated Thistlemarch. So when a High Fae appears to her, she feels disbelief, and distrust. Like her mother, Mouse has studied the old stories, and she knows that a bargain with a faerie is not to be taken lightly. But she needs this inheritance to pay for Roger’s care – and so Mouse makes a deal.

As the story unfolds, the falling-down estate takes on a bit of a life of its own, rebuilt and falling down again. The faerie called Thornwood seems to be allying himself with Mouse, but she’s not sure she can trust him. A hateful, grasping cousin, a longtime friend in the village vicar, a nasty lawyer, a loyal gardener, and an enigmatic faerie servant surround our protagonist, who will encounter a dragon, a dog, and a stone mermaid along the way. Faeries and magic, yes, but also class differences, penury, and various prejudices, shellshock and a nation haunted by war. It’s a riveting combination, and for all its twists, finishes with something like a fairy tale ending. I was entranced, and would read more from debut author Corrigan.

Rating: 7 egg sandwiches.

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Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett

Posted on March 14, 2025 by pagesofjulia

This is book 3 in a series, and this review contains spoilers for the first two books.

What I love about the world of Emily Wilde is, first, the imaginative nature of this world and character. Emily Wilde is an academic scholar in the field of dryadology, or the study of faeries; but if that sounds dreamy, check again. Emily is capable of being lost in thought, yes, but those thoughts are generally dry, serious, and certainly research-based. She has an avid, academic passion for her field of study. She has read it all, and will be affronted to discover any theory or study that she’s unfamiliar with. She has no time for sentiment or romance (in either sense); when we first met her, in book one, she didn’t really have friends, other than her companion Shadow, who is a Black Hound (a fae creature) glamoured to look like a very large, intimidating black dog to regular humans. Emily and Shadow live in a regular-human world with decent access to the fae world, if you know where to look. She lives for her work.

In books one and two, we saw her social life expand somewhat, although not without growing pains. She has made friends, however uncomfortable she may be with that fact, and she has a love: formerly an academic colleague with whom she did not get along (one of those enemies-to-lovers tropes), Wendell has turned out to be a long-lost faerie prince, which explains why he seems so lazily disinclined to academic work. Emily had long suspected he faked his work, and this has been proven correct: he’d been skating by on what he knew of faeries by other means. They have a sweet relationship, clearly based in genuine mutual regard, although only one of them is much capable of romance, and it’s not Emily.

Here in book three, Wendell has been returned to his realm, and become a faerie king, by the surprising work of a mortal – Emily herself – in overthrowing the evil queen, Wendell’s stepmother, who had murdered much of his family as other potential heirs. Faeries, it turns out, are quite murderous types, especially those of Wendell’s realm. So in this installment, Emily navigates becoming a sort of queen consort (they haven’t technically married yet, solely because of her cold feet), living full-time in the faerie world (she likes to study them but they don’t necessarily make her feel comfortable), and seeing dear Shadow become frail in his old age. The part of this she’s most excited about is the opportunity for study; she sees research questions and papers she might write all around her. (“If Wendell’s stepmother has us slain before I have a chance to contribute to the scholarly debate, I will be very disappointed.”) She feels only dread at the glamourous and magical queenly gowns she is given, and likewise the other trappings of court. Luckily for Emily (?), nothing ever goes smoothly in Fae, and there will be problems to solve. With research! of course.

So. First, what I love is the imagination at work in this worldbuilding, which is satisfyingly thorough. The various kinds and functions of faeries, and their intrigues and class divisions, are all fascinating in themselves. Second, what I love is Emily’s character and voice. These books are told as Emily’s journals, complete with the (sometimes slightly awkward, but they do feel believable) explanations for how, in the middle of great danger and adventure, she has come to be writing journals entries. (Answer: writing is how she processes and self-soothes, and, research über alles; these notes could become a paper or conference presentation! Once we get to know Emily, this actually checks out.) Getting to hear these adventures in her own voice emphasizes Emily’s droll character. She never really gets over her sense of awkwardness at how much she loves Wendell; the bits she glosses over (sex) are as telling as those she sinks deeply into (footnotes!) – also, Heather Fawcett has been a YA and middle-grades author prior to this series, so keeping the sex off-screen and vague is probably a comfort zone. These books are just really fun, and wholesome even when they get a bit gruesome. It is comforting to see that even when terrible things happen they can be undone.

I was genuinely very sad when I finished this book, which I fear is the last in an intended trilogy. I need there to be more from this delightful author. I guess I’ll do some YA reading soon.

On the other hand, this book (which ends in a library) does leave room for a sequel. Fawcett! We could have more Emily!

Do recommend.

Rating: 8 ornate, bespoke notebooks.

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The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H. G. Parry

Posted on December 13, 2024 by pagesofjulia

H. G. Parry continues to impress me deeply (see previous reviews here). I think this might be my favorite of her books, although The Magician’s Daughter was a feat. (This is not the first year I’ve given two books from the same author a perfect 10 rating: Alix Harrow, Stephen King, and Norman Maclean have each held this spot. Still.)

The book opens with a fateful meeting of the narrator, Clover Hill, with a person who will become one of the most important figures of her life. Chapter 2 rewinds to how she got there. “If it hadn’t been for the Great War, I would never have gone to Camford University of Magical Scholarship. I would never have known it existed.” Clover comes from a farm near a tiny village in Lancashire, a humble family background. She was very close to her older brother Matthew, despite five years of age difference, and it was Clover who helped convince their mother to let Matthew go to war, with some misgivings on Clover’s part. And so she carries the predictable guilt when he returns to them after four long years, alive, but scarcely recognizable. His homecoming is preceded by a visit from a fellow soldier who tells the family a wild and unbelievable story: Matthew’s is no ordinary war wound. He has been the victim of a faerie curse.

Families like Clover’s aren’t normally made aware of this fact, but magic is alive and well in the world she inhabits. Its study and practice, however, are reserved for select few magical Families (always capitalized), who possess great wealth and privilege as well as inherited, secret powers. Matthew suffers terribly. His life is in danger. And young Clover, already an ambitious girl who’d hoped to escape the family farm by way of teachers’ college, decides that she will pursue magic instead. A very, very tiny number of students are accepted to England’s university of magical scholarship, if their entrance exam scores are exemplary. Perhaps a tinier number of students even from the great Families are women. Clover will need to be very good indeed. But with the hopes of recovering Matthew’s health – even saving his life – to motivate her, Clover can do great things.

Camford University is located (as you might guess) in a mysterious space accessed by two enchanted doors in Cambridge and Oxford Universities, respectively. It’s a charmed and charming place, and upon first sight, Clover wants only to be a part of the place. Her desperation to save her beloved brother is quickly paralleled by her passion for magical scholarship (at which she excels, despite the oft-repeated claim that only members of Families should be so talented) and her desire to belong to Camford. Her heart leaps further when she clicks into place as part of a foursome of close friends: Hero Hartley, a lovely, glamorous girl, socially gifted and a serious scholar in her own right. Eddie Gaskell, awkward, shy, deeply devoted to plants and the natural world. And Alden Lennox-Fontaine, the golden boy of their year at Camford and beyond. He is physically stunning, impossibly wealthy, clever, graceful – “he was like a burning sun.” In Alden in particular, Clover finds a partner in the study of faerie spells and magic, which has been outlawed since the sensational wartime accident that changed Matthew’s life. The foursome make a project of studying what has been forbidden. Clover wants to save her brother. Hero wants to achieve the kind of academic success that will justify her career as a scholar so that she doesn’t have to marry a rich bore like her father intends for her. Eddie wants to please his friends. It’s not clear what drives Alden to study the fae.

The novel is historical fiction, in that it takes place just before, during and after World War I, reestablishing those events in a world with secret magic held by a chosen few. It’s about academia, the ivory tower that elevates and excludes, while offering a thrilling search for truth and self-betterment. It’s very much about friendship: the less-literal ‘magic’ of finding one’s people after a young life spent feeling alone – the magic of friendship, belonging, fellowship – is atmospheric and thick and real, evoked here in a way that it took me a while to realize reminded me of Tana French’s work in The Likeness or The Witch Elm or maybe The Secret Place. (There are also obvious parallels to the Scholomance series by Naomi Novik.)

As is often true in Parry’s work, there is metaphor available, if one considers that Clover is an outsider by gender, by class, and by not coming from a magical Family – England having a nuance of caring not just about class but about family and ‘breeding.’ We can think of the inherited ability to do magic as another manifestation of class or caste. And it is revealed late in the book (spoiler appears here in white text; highlight to read) that it is not Family at all that confers ease of magical learning, but the inhalation of magical pollen at the various universities of magic around the world. The Families know this, and purposefully keep that pollen to themselves, feeding it (as it were) to only their own, to keep alive an appearance of difference and superiority where there is none. It’s like giving multivitamins to your kids and then pretending they’re inherently better than those lousy malnourished kids down the street. That’s a whole ‘nother level of ugliness.

These issues of caste and injustice, and the idea of who is worthy and who is harmed by being kept out, are revealed and considered in layers as the story progresses. After a youth of yearning to be let in, to belong to Camford, Clover achieves what she seeks, more or less: in later, fast-forwarded sections of the novel, she is a PhD candidate and professor at her alma mater. But continuing injustices will eventually force her to realize that nothing has been resolved by her own promotion except her own personal success (which is tenuous). “The only difference was that the door had let me in, and so I hadn’t questioned who else it was keeping out and why.”

As you might be gathering, Clover and her friends and their secret work on faerie magic wind up involved in larger issues than they originally expect: not only Matthew’s fate but the very world around them are at stake. They must navigate split loyalties, major sacrifices, and big questions of right and wrong. Secrets also exist in layers: the magical world mostly a secret from the larger mundane one that Clover is native to; her studies with her friends on faeries, necessarily a secret from Camford and the magical world; and each of the friends, perhaps, keeping secrets from each other. There is heartbreak in the development and breaking of the friendship bond. More so in the possible breaking up of the world.

I think this is the most brilliant of H. G. Parry’s work yet.

Rating: 10 roses.

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Heartless by H. G. Parry

Posted on August 23, 2024 by pagesofjulia

From memory, I’m going to say the Peter Pan story was sweet and heartwarming, with some good healthy ideas in it about always retaining a lovably childlike (not childish!) spirit and the magic of believing. We fly through the stars and have adventures! We help each other. And even when we have to (sigh) grow up, we can access that magic again through the power of imagination.

Then there was the movie Hook, which had Robin Williams and was therefore great, and (again in my possibly faulty memory) more or less followed those themes. We all have to grow up, but it wouldn’t be healthy to lose all the joy of childhood.

This is not that version of Peter Pan.

H.G. Parry, who I fell for hard with The Magician’s Daughter, takes us on a more realistic and darker journey with Heartless. Now the protagonist is neither a Darling nor a Lost Boy nor Peter himself, but an orphaned child in a Dickensian sort of London named James, who gives himself the fanciful last name Hook when he gets a chance at self-invention. James is a born storyteller, a skill which endears him to the only boy at the orphanage James really cares about, a careless but compelling child named Peter. For Peter, James tells stories: ones his mother told him or read him, ones he’s read himself, ones he’s made up. For Peter he makes up the child-king Peter Pan and his sometimes-antagonist the pirate Captain Hook, who inhabit a magical (and made up) island called Neverland. These tales keep Peter at James’s bedside until the night that Peter leaps off the orphanage’s high roof and flies into the stars: “second to the right, and straight on till morning.” James wants to follow his best and only friend, the boy who did not so much as look back. But when James leaps, he falls to the stone courtyard below.

From here we follow James Hook (his new identity) and his friend Gwendolen Darling (who takes the identity of James’s younger brother, George Hook) in their adulthood. James is forever chasing after Peter. He will eventually find what he’s looking for and find also that it’s not what he was looking for at all. This brief book (141 pages) is Peter Pan, yes, but retold with a different protagonist at its sympathetic center and a decidedly sinister twist; fairies are not sweet but uncaring. Captain Hook, of all people, is the one we feel for. And we are centered on the power not only of imagination but of storytelling – and like all of them, this is a power that can be used for good or ill. “[The fairies] didn’t understand that stories weren’t meant to be lived in forever; they were meant to be shared, passed on, questioned, to mingle with a thousand other tales and poems and experiences and be changed by them. They didn’t understand that stories, too, needed to grow. He hadn’t understood himself until recently.”

A retelling of a classic with rather more realism (especially in the London setting) and more darkness, but also still sweet and wholesome, with Parry’s absolutely lovely style; I’m going back for more from her.

Rating: 8 leaves.

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Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Posted on March 29, 2024 by pagesofjulia

This is book 2 in a series, following Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries.

This review contains spoilers for book 1.

Having wrapped up adventures in Hrafnsvik, Emily has returned to Cambridge and a more comfortable *tenured* position there. Her nineteen-year-old niece, Ariadne, has arrived on the scene as a student, as Emily’s self-appointed assistant, and as a fan and annoyance. Wendell remains nearby, also a fan: his proposal (from near the end of book 1) remains an open question. Now we know his own courtly-faerie identity, it also transpires that would-be assassins have begun to hound him, to reduce his threat to a distant and fearsome fae crown. Meanwhile, an antagonistic department head (ha) is also hounding Wendell and Emily both, seemingly out of some combination of suspicion about their academic integrity and a sense of late-career threat. Obviously, then (that is sarcasm), the whole troop winds up traveling together – Emily, Wendell, Ariadne, and the grumpy Dr. Farris Rose – to a tiny village in the Alps where a controversial dryadologist named Danielle de Grey disappeared some 50 years ago.

This returns readers to a little-populated setting Fawcett clearly favors. Not quite a closed room, the village and surrounding natural world still offer a useful limitation on outside distractions. Compared to Hrafnsvik from the last book, the residents of St. Liesl play a smaller role in this novel’s cast. It keeps that character list neat: Emily (still curmudgeonly, genius, deeply socially awkward, and more caring than she’d like us to know), Wendell (hedonistic, lazy, compulsively neat, and in love), Ariadne (enthusiastic and committed, but oh, young), and Rose (who may have something to offer, if he could get past his own unpleasantness), as well as the famed de Grey and the lovelorn scholar who has chased her, in turn, into misty faerie worlds. With this limited cast, Fawcett does well with humor and the tension Emily feels about her good friend and would-be lover. The fae creatures she studies continue to be a diverse and diverting bit of world-building. Action and development occasionally felt a bit rushed to me, more than I remember from book 1, but it was still a good time, and this is a book with momentum, that motivates the reader to stay up for just one or two more chapters. Also, I’m still pleased by the mild snark about academia, and the quirk of Emily’s character that she’s always thinking about what a good paper or conference presentation her current adventure will make, no matter how dire as it happens. I’m in for book 3.

Rating: 7 carrots.

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Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Posted on May 15, 2023 by pagesofjulia

This was a fun one. Emily Wilde is an academic, and a bit of a type: grumpy, antisocial, deeply socially awkward and mostly unbothered about it; she is passionate about her work in the field of dryadology, which is faeries, or the Folk. Her hair is absolutely without exception a mess, even under the influence of magic. We meet her en route to do a season of fieldwork in the very remote, far northern village of Hrafnsvik, whose faeries, known as the “Hidden Ones,” are poorly documented. The research she hopes to accomplish here will complete the work of a decade or more, her Encyclopaedia of Faeries, whose publication should cement her academic reputation and finally get her out of adjunct work and into a position with tenure. (Those of you who know my personal life these days will hear me chuckle in bitter recognition.) This book takes the form of her journal entries, intended as notes for her professional work and as “record for those scholars who come after me should I be captured by the Folk.” Which, mild spoiler, she will be.

Emily arrives in Hrafnsvik with her loyal dog Shadow but fails to immediately thrive, because of her clumsiness with the locals (whose help she needs, whether she acknowledges it or not) and unfamiliarity with the climate (very cold). A few small quibbles with the novel’s consistency here: Emily is proud of her past expeditions into the field, which have ranged far and wide; she is far better with fieldwork than she is at working with other mortals. “I am used to humble accommodations and humble folks–I once slept in a farmer’s cheese shed in Andalusia.” But she’s also never started a fire (?!) and doesn’t know where to begin, and can’t figure out how to split wood (certainly an acquired skill; but her inability to jump in and begin feels like it belies an experience ‘in the field’). She is assessed as an ‘indoors type’ by a sneering local, at which she bristles but doesn’t disagree. And yet she does some massive mountain hikes in the course of her research; she estimates that her daily limit is twenty miles, and in precipitous conditions. In a word, these feel like inconsistencies in the character: is she an indoors type who is unable to light a fire? or is she an intrepid mountain hiker and experienced field researcher? (There is also a woman who mourns the loss of her husband. But then her daughter comes home to both parents.) Small details, perhaps, but they catch my brain distractingly. There is still much to love, however.

After Emily’s early struggles in Hrafnsvik, she is both assisted and further irritated by a new arrival: her colleague Wendell Bambleby. Famous, handsome, and well regarded in the field – if a bit academically lazy, in Emily’s view – he decides inexplicably to crash her fieldwork party, tidying up her lodgings, charming the locals, and generally causing trouble. (To highlight their different personalities, one of his first nights in town was “the most enjoyable evening I have spent in Hrafnsvik, as the villagers largely forgot about my existence amidst the gale-force winds of Bambleby’s personality. I was delighted to sit in the corner with my food and a book and speak to no one.”) The challenging local community, the region’s mysterious and intoxicating Folk, and Bambleby – both obnoxious and somehow appealing – combine to offer Emily chances she’s never really had before, in terms of research, friendship, and romance.

The result is funny, fun, frequently silly, and also suspenseful. Emily is definitely a type (the well-meaning but curmudgeonly professor), but still charming; her new acquaintances include mortals and faeries and at least one frightening faery king. Even Shadow, the loveable loyal hound, is more than he at first seems. I loved the worldbuilding aspect of dryadology, for example, the concept of oíche sidhe, a housekeeping faery driven mad by disorder. The device of Emily’s journal means we get appended faery tales, which was fun. While the Hrafnsvik story is neatly wrapped up, Emily’s own ends on a bit of a cliffhanger; this novel is book 1 in a series, and despite some small quibbles, I’m in for book 2.

Rating: 7 needle-fingers.

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The Great Night by Chris Adrian

Posted on May 30, 2011 by pagesofjulia

This book is billed as a modern-day retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which sounds fairly ambitious. The original classic is far too much to mess around with lightly. I find it beautiful, haunting, magical, and surprisingly accessible; I think anyone and everyone should be able to enjoy a production of this play, which might not be true of all the bard’s work, no matter how wonderful. But I have to give Adrian full credit: I feel that he created something new out of it, definitely a recognizable retelling, but something new and beautiful in its own way, very different and very wonderful too.

Three young people, Henry, Will, and Molly, are all (separately) lost in Buena Vista Park in San Francisco at dusk on midsummer night’s eve. All three were on their way to the same party which none really wanted to attend; all three are tenuously connected without actually knowing one another; and all three are quite neurotic in their own ways. Meanwhile, Titania is grief-stricken, having lost her Boy to leukemia (and being unfamiliar with the mortal concept of death), and then having lost Oberon, who left her when they quarreled in their shared grief. In despair and resignation, she releases Puck from his bond of servitude, and he rages as the Beast throughout the park. Also meanwhile, a troupe of homeless aspiring actors meet to rehearse a musical play, but are separated, as the fairies come out to frolic, or flee Puck, or make mischief.

Chapter by chapter we get inside the heads of the three mortal lovers, and sometimes of Titania too. The character development is exquisite; I loved learning more about the histories of Will, Molly, and Henry, and gradually putting together the clues and learning how they’re interconnected and where their respective neuroses might have come from. The depth of these complex, nuanced, disturbed characters might have been my most favorite part of this book.

Titania gets substantially more development, too. The lengthened and deepened relationship with the Boy, and his battle with cancer, allow for her to mature and look outside herself in ways that a fairy queen would not normally be called to do. Even Puck gets a more significant personality, and desires of his own.

Part fairy tale – of course – The Great Night has all the magic and all the lavish scenery that Shakespeare’s Titania & Oberon could have wanted, helped along by the alternately lush & misty San Francisco parkland. As in the play, there are disturbing moments; but these are fully fleshed out. I guess the great difference here is that this is a lengthy novel (~300 pages) with all the exposition that comes with this format, and there is simply less opportunity in a slim play for this kind of development. But Adrian’s work is darker, and more graphic. (There is Sex. Seriously.) The ending is not lighthearted and happy as it is in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Among the mortal characters, we meet a tree doctor; men and women recovering from the suicides of loved ones; and the mess that OCD can make of a life; the lovers are gay and straight but always damaged. But the worlds are so fully realized… and the three youth are so fully developed, I ached for them. When every chapter closed, I regretted leaving that chapter’s focus character, but was happy to reunite with the next.

This was one of those books I was very sorry to see the end of. I wish there were more. Luckily, Adrian has written other books!

I recommend The Great Night. Certainly nothing is taken away from Shakespeare’s masterpiece; but this is a different realization of the same story-skeleton, in a different format, and it is absolutely an accomplishment all by itself.

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