WOW! This book was excellent. I am disappointed in myself that it took me this long to get to it.
I loved every minute that I spent with Clover, Hero, Eddie, and Alden. Their friendship, found family, was beautiful - until it fell apart. The school days were filled with magic and whimsy and growth. When the friendship dissolves, we follow Clover in her post-studies ventures and then all hell breaks loose.
The academic setting was cozy and I will say magical and whimsical again, because that’s the only way that I can think to describe it. I got lost in the magic of the world. The character development was phenomenal - each of the characters was perfectly imperfect and I loved them all so dearly. The pacing of the story was exquisitely slow burn. The plot included the fae world. The magic system was divine.
This is the first book in a long time that made me feel the way The Night Circus made me feel. This means that this book will have a lasting place in my memory and heart. I implore all of you to give this story a chance. It is a stellar standalone.
Many thanks to Redhook/Orbit Books and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book. The opinions expressed are given freely and are honest and my own.

This was my first book of H. G. Parry but I’m certain it won’t be my last. This book was wonderful. The world building, prose, and character development were absolutely breathtaking. The only reason I’m not giving this five stars is that it was a little slow and hard to get into at the beginning.

Our main character, Clover, is a young woman whose life gets changed due to her brother’s enlistment in WWI. When he returns home from war, he has the trauma of war, but also has been hit with a faerie curse. Clover who has known nothing of magic before this wants to learn as much as she can and enrolls in an elite university for magical individuals. It’s here where she meets Alden, Hero, and Eddie and they try and find a cure for her brother.

This story had twists that were easy to guess what was next and others were turns I didn’t expect. I highly recommend this book if you’re wanting an academia fantasy that draws you in and brings the world to you.

I didn't know how much I was going to love this book. Duh, it's about magic so it feels magical. But like in the way of when you watch The Magicians. You just get wrapped up in the story and the otherworldliness of it. At the core, it's a story about friendship and family and the ties that break and the ties that bind.

Decent dark academia/fantasy book. Pacing could have been a little better. Purchased for library collection.

Dark academia. Forbidden magic. Angry Fae. Edge of your seat story. Four friends caught in a tangled web of deceit as they try and beat a Fae to save the ones they love. Loved it!
Thanks Netgalley for the ARC - my opinions are my own.

A richly imagined, character-driven historical fantasy that blends dark academia vibes with the eerie beauty of faerie magic. H.G. Parry delivers a slow-burn story filled with secret knowledge, complex friendships, and the quiet danger of opening doors best left shut.

While the magic takes its time to unfold, the wait is worth it—the worldbuilding is subtle, layered, and immersive. The characters are deeply compelling, and the emotional stakes feel real. Though the protagonists are young, the themes and tone are firmly rooted in adult fantasy, exploring loyalty, obsession, and the cost of knowledge.

If you're drawn to beautifully written, atmospheric fantasy with academic intrigue and mythic undertones, this is a rewarding read. It may start slow, but it builds into something truly magical.

Ok this has a weird set up on it , like how it is told. Which is not bad just weird. Definitely feel like is a diary entry or a recounting of what happened. Which is nice. Overall the story is captivating and engaging. The magic system is very interesting and the characters too. I enjoyed. It was a good academia style book .

This felt like stepping into a hidden world full of wonder and just the right amount of danger. The writing had this magical quality that made every scene feel alive. The blend of adventure, mystery, and fae lore kept me hooked, and the characters had a quiet strength that really worked. A beautifully imagined story.

Fantastic world building that transports, Characters you can feel for, a story line that hooks you? Yes, yes, & yes. Super happy to have been able to read this story & will most definetley be recommending to others.

Historical fantasy in an academic setting, where a group of friends dabble in forbidden magic in order to break a fae curse. Of course things don’t go as planned, and when the seals separating the faerie world from the human world break, they must come together years later to fix their mistakes.

I absolutely loved this book, and it cemented H. G. Parry as an auto-buy author for me. This is the type of academic book I love, where the characters come together and form these deep (and maybe somewhat toxic) relationships over research and discovery and pushing the boundaries of magic. The writing is fantastic, the characters are likeable and sympathetic, and the story is compelling. This was one of my favorite books of 2024 and I can’t wait to see what Parry writes next.

I absolutely adored the author's previous novel, The Magician's Daughter, and I have been so excited to read this one! H.G. Parry's writing is impeccable, so this author is truly an auto-buy author for me.

The Scholar and the Last Fairie Door was AMAZING!! The combination of DARK ACADEMIA x FAE x secret doors x conspiracies/things went wrong x friendship was outstanding, and the author's prose FLAWLESS. I loved this book a lot, and it saddens me that it is so underhyped.

I strongly recommend this book and this author to fans of timeless prose, dark academia, and fae fans.

3.5

I liked this book, which feels like faint praise, but there’s a lot here that truly shines. The author’s writing is, as always, gorgeous and evocative. Every sentence is steeped in atmosphere, and the post-World War I academic setting is brought to life with an impressive depth of detail. It’s immersive and beautifully rendered.

The characters are another standout. Fully fleshed out and deeply human, each one brought something unique to the story, and I found myself genuinely invested in their journeys. Their emotional arcs were handled with care, and by the time the ending rolled around, a deeply satisfying one. I felt it had all paid off.

That said, the novel’s structure made it a bit of a slog at times. The first half moves slowly, taking its time to set the stage and build the world, while the second half shifts gears into a much faster-paced, action-driven narrative. The pacing felt clunky because of this imbalance, and I occasionally found myself struggling through the beginning in hopes that it would eventually pick up, which it does, but not without asking for some patience.

Overall, this is a beautifully written, character-rich novel that delivers a rewarding payoff, even if getting there requires navigating some slow stretches.

Thank you to Redhook Books for an advanced gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

My favorite read of the year!

The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door is an engrossing, thematically rich read - four books for its four parts.
Spring : Clover's journey from farm to the hallowed halls of Camford (LOL!), outcast and under-confident in her abilities till she's adopted by the popular duo of Alden and Hero. The "last, golden summer" and utter sense of devastation and futility of war post WW1 were captured so well.
Summer : Dark academia with a dash of fae magic! The thrill of discovery and indomitable hubris as the four are lured into what they really shouldn't!
Fall : When it all falls apart!
Winter :Their final chance at redemption. Here the story builds itself out to cover larger themes about colonization and protecting the status quo.

At the heart of it, it remains a character driven story of the four protagonists. It's a slow burner, but I really appreciate the level of detail given about all their individual dynamics with each other. Life comes a (bittersweet) full circle in the end, and I was marvelling at each of their story arcs.

My thanks to Netgalley for the eARC, all opinions my own!

Camford, 1920. A magical secret academy. A girl without magic. A brother cursed by faerie war. And a golden boy who changes everything.

This book had all the ingredients I should have loved—glittering academic settings, a post-WWI backdrop, secret societies, and broken doors between worlds. And while I did enjoy it, it didn’t sweep me away the same way Parry’s debut did. What I adored about The Magician’s Daughter was how it made me feel like a kid reading a fairytale again—this one felt more grounded in its historical influences and character dynamics than in whimsy and wonder.

I wanted more from the faerie country—more lore, more vivid worldbuilding, maybe even a second POV to show us what was at stake beyond Clover’s perspective. That said, I was still hooked by the mystery of what really happened during that one fateful summer and the complex feelings Clover holds toward the people she once trusted.

This book grabbed me from the first page. I loved HG Parry's other books and this was no exception. I have already purchased the audio of this book because I loved it so much!>

A true dark academia! Which, at first, excited me, but soon I realized that maybe I like my stories to be academia-light. I loved the world-building and the fae aspects, but this was a little too slow for me. I never truly cared that much about the characters, so the fact that this was an extremely character-driven book was difficult for me. Three stars.

This is exactly the kind of fantasy I’ve been longing for. It’s clever, atmospheric, and brings a fresh, dark, and surprisingly realistic (ha) twist to the fae, which I haven’t seen in a long time. Sexy faeries can be fun, and I’ve enjoyed my fair share of those stories, but this one gave me the dangerous, inhuman, deal-making tricksters that truly pique my interest. I also loved how the book is a love letter to scholarship, making sure that academia is at the heart of the dark academia genre.

The four main characters—Clover, Alden, Hero, and Eddie—stay with you as their stories unfold across the four parts of the book, but Clover, as the narrator, really anchors us in her perspective. She felt incredibly natural, relatable, and authentic.

The only reason this gets four stars instead of five is that it reads more like YA, and the pacing, which I found... lacking in excitement at times.

Am I glad I read it? I am! I came to this book having read Parry's Heartless a few months prior, my first book by her, and absolutely LOVED it. I was already eager to read this one for that reason, plus I enjoy historical fantasy set in the aftermath of WW1 and books about the spiraling shenanigans an intense group of codependent coeds find themselves tangled in.

Parry's approach to the magic school trope is perhaps one of my favorites, and I think it, combined with how she uses the 'malicious' fae, works really nicely as an exploration of not only dark histories and insidious exclusivity of the ivory tower but also of the temptation to view admission into said tower as acceptance into the privileged elite. This is dark academia in content (the obsessive pursuit of knowledge at all costs & its repercussions; the exploitative underbelly of prized institutions of 'higher learning') but not in tone.

The plot can be efficiently summarized as the aforementioned group of coeds f*cking around and finding out; the first 60ish% of the book is dedicated to the f*cking around, and we finally get around to the finding out portion of the story in the last 40%. I had a really enjoyable time reading this book, even with how very long it is, but it lacked that je ne sais quoi, that extra oomph that would make me really love it.

Rating: 👍🏻👍🏻 (really liked; 4.5 stars)

Thank you to Redhook Books and Netgalley for the advance copy of this title!

The novel excels in its atmospheric description of magical academia, reminiscent of classics in the genre while establishing its own unique identity. The faerie elements introduce a wild, dangerous magic that contrasts with the structured academic environment of Camford, creating an intriguing magical system with depth and consequences.
With its themes of sacrifice, class division, friendship, and the lasting impact of war, "The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door" offers a thoughtful reading experience beyond typical magical school stories. The bittersweet conclusion hints at far-reaching repercussions that leave readers contemplating the true cost of mystical knowledge and power.
For fans of historical fantasy with darker undertones and complex character relationships, this novel provides an immersive journey into a magical version of 1920s England that feels both familiar and wonderfully strange.

I don't know how H. G. Parry does it, but she always delivers. I have yet to rate an H. G. Parry book anything less than 5 stars, and The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door is no exception. She is literally THE queen of standalone, character-driven fantasy.

The Scholar and The Last Faerie Door feels reminiscent of Parry's debut, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, if only because we are back in the world of academia again, and novella Heartless, in part due to the complicated friendships between main characters -- and yet it's entirely different from anything else in Parry's growing oeuvre. In this book, we're introduced to scholarship witch Clover Hill, a young woman from a rural family who had not known magic existed until a few short months ago. Clover's brother Matthew fought in World War I and came back damaged by a faerie's curse, which launches Clover on a quest to find a cure, bringing her to the magical school of Camford. At Camford, she is an outcast among the wealthy Families whose children have attended the college for generations; but when one of these young men (because they are almost all, of course, men) takes a shine to her, Clover's life expands in ways she never knew and sews the seeds for a dangerous event years later.

This novel felt nostalgic in all the right ways and wholly absorbing. I couldn't put it down, while at the same time wanting to savor it. I say this every time, but I adore Parry's pacing: from the languid beginning to the breakneck ending, this book was beat-for-beat absolutely perfect. And the relationships between the characters!

Everyone here felt so beautifully drawn that I couldn't help but feel I knew them, that I'd been brought into the fold at Camford too. Clover is a wonderful protagonist: determined and intelligent yet naive to the manipulations of those around her, provincial and yet worldly in ways the Families could never be, caring and yet shortsighted to how her singleminded focus can hurt others. Alden, the wealthy young man who stumbles upon Clover reading his favorite author in the library, is by turns charismatic and selfish, a star who glitters so brightly that he can shine on you, too, or blot out your light entirely. Hero, Alden's childhood friend and former betrothed, is a kindhearted and strongwilled woman who refuses to submit to what the men around her want her to become, and she's my absolute favorite of the crew. And shy plant specialist Eddie is the moral compass of the group, Alden's foil in more ways than one. The complex relationships between the four are a highlight, as is the way Clover's world clashes with the glitz and glamor of Alden's. The dialogue here sparkles, and I became so deeply invested in part because of the characters.

I also adored the setting of Camford itself. A magical space between both Cambridge and Oxford, Camford is steeped in tradition and Clover at first wants nothing more than to become a part of this. But like all institutions, Camford has a dark side; right away, we can see part of this in the way that Clover and Hero are treated as female scholars, but Parry peels back the layers of this until the ending in a way that was truly unexpected. Much like her Shadow Histories duology, there is a rich revolutionary thread running through this book and I wholeheartedly enjoyed it.

Honestly, everyone who says "dark academia is an aesthetic, not a genre" ought to read this book. Because, yes, dark academia IS the moment right now, and so that means we're getting inundated with lots of genres wearing Dark Academia's coat, and fitting into it quite poorly. But then you've got books like this, that are so intelligent and evocative and beautiful that they should become instant classics and hallmarks of the genre. This is the dark academia I've been searching for all year, and I am so thrilled to have found it.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Redhook Books, and H. G. Parry for gifting me this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!