The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst Review: A Charming Cottagecore YA Fantasy

When sixteen-year-old Calisa is sent by her parents, Mom-Kate and Mom-Elise, from Brooklyn to rural Vermont for the summer, she expects to find the cozy bed-and-breakfast her great-aunt Zee runs. What she finds instead is a rundown inn with a broken porch, a weed-filled garden, and a dusty library — and an Auntie Zee who makes it quietly clear she doesn't want Calisa there. After a series of inexplicable magical events and strange encounters with the inn's quirky guests, Calisa begins uncovering supernatural discoveries that deepen her questions rather than answering them. When Auntie Zee disappears entirely, Calisa must join forces with Jack — the son of the resident groundskeeper — to keep the inn running and bring her great-aunt back, all without alarming the guests. Along the way, Calisa's baking skills and Jack's innkeeping knowledge prove to be a quietly perfect pairing.

Durst has built a reputation as a reliable voice in what readers and critics have come to call "cozy fantasy" — stories where the supernatural is present but never overwhelming, and where warmth, found family, and the rhythms of everyday domestic life anchor the magic. The Faraway Inn leans fully into that mode: the Vermont setting, the grumpy resident cat named Portia, the guests with their peculiarities, and Calisa's baking all serve as the connective tissue of the narrative. Critical coverage describes the result as "all the right ingredients" combining to create "an irresistible cottagecore fantasy." The book is structured around a teen protagonist managing genuine emotional stakes — family estrangement, self-discovery, an unexpected romance — within a framework that consistently prioritizes comfort over dread.

The novel arrives with notable enthusiasm from fellow authors in the YA and fantasy space. C. B. Lee, the New York Times bestselling author of Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe, calls it "a soothing balm for any aching heart" and writes that "Durst's cozy storytelling is at its best here, radiating joy and love on every page." Axie Oh, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, describes it as "filled with magical mysteries, whimsical surprises, and a dash of sweet romance" and "the perfect cozy read." Kamilah Cole, a Lodestar Award finalist, praises Durst's ability to give readers "the perfect balance of familiar and fantastical" — a consistent thread in how the novel's blurbers characterize its particular appeal. Tricia Levenseller, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, adds a food-centered note: the book, she writes, "will also, consequently, make you crave cake."

The Faraway Inn is designed as an unabashedly cozy read, and that is both its clearest strength and its most honest limitation. Readers who gravitate toward high-tension fantasy plots, morally complex world-building, or narratives that prioritize darkness alongside light may find the deliberate gentleness of Durst's approach unsatisfying. The novel's supernatural elements are woven into a domestic, hospitality-centered frame — the magic serves the warmth, not the other way around — which means those seeking the kind of escalating supernatural stakes found in darker YA fantasy are unlikely to find them here. The book is specifically calibrated for readers who want to settle in, not be unsettled.

The Faraway Inn is squarely aimed at teens — the publisher lists a reading age of 17 and up — but its appeal extends to adult readers of cozy fantasy who came to the genre through Durst's earlier work or through the broader cottagecore-inflected wave of comfort fiction. It is a strong recommendation for anyone who has enjoyed books that pair magic with baked goods, found family dynamics, slow-burn romance, and a setting that functions almost as a character in itself. Critical coverage describes the cozy Vermont inn, complete with its supernatural guests and resident grumpy cat, as enriching the story's supernatural fantasy — and that texture, detail-first and atmosphere-forward, is what the novel is clearly designed to deliver. For readers ready to, as Kamilah Cole puts it, "brew some tea and settle in," The Faraway Inn offers exactly what it promises.