I really wanted to enjoy this book, but it was a struggle. It could have been much shorter. Maybe if it had been around 300 pages it would have been good. Overall it reminded me of a combination of The Secret History and Harry Potter.

An insanely and maybe unnecessarily long book, but I did enjoy it. I loved the portrayal of faeries in this one - fans of Holly Black or Emily Wilde, where the fae veer from human in appearance or personality. The dark academia vibes are there, but I wish were amped up much more. The school setting was satisfying, though, and I enjoyed its role in developing the friendships central to the plot.

"It was one of the many times when learning more taught me how little I knew."

I absolutely loooved this book! I hoped to enjoy it, but it completely took me by surprise how deeply I truly did. It drew me in right from the start. Why hasn't this book gotten more attention?? So many books (that I haven't particularly enjoyed) are getting the special/deluxe edition treatment, yet this one hasn't (that I know of). I hope it does though because I want a book trophy for this one. What initially drew me in was the blending of historical events with fantasy. The book starts off at the beginning of WWI with soldiers enlisting for the war, but then many are injured or killed by a faerie and we follow Clover as she tries to find a way to help her brother, who was hurt in the attack. The book has themes of gender and class discrimination, colonization, sacrifice, and friendship.

The first half of the book takes place at a magical university that's mainly attended by "Families" that have been going for generations and are of the upper crust in society. Clover is a scholarship student who has to deal with the elitism of her classmates as she is both female and not rich. She befriends golden boy Alden and his friends, Hero and Eddie, who accept her despite their class differences. They spend a magical school year and summer together before everything falls apart. Years later, they must face the consequences of their actions.

This book was reminiscent of Harry Potter and The Magicians. Though I've never read The Magicians novels, so I'm basing the feels purely on season one of the tv show adaptation 😆 The novel explores the dark side of magic and the cost of it. The dark academia vibes were 🤌🏻🤌🏻 Parts of the book felt like the later, darker years in Harry Potter, though the changing layout of the school grounds reminded me of Hogwarts in year one. I enjoyed the realistic portrayals of the friendships as they weren't perfect, but I still felt the strong camaraderie.

The book was incredibly well written. I loved the authors vivid descriptions of not just the physical world, but also of Clover's feelings as she learns magic and about the faerie. She also does a great job capturing Clover's feelings about her friends.

A historical fantasy set at a secret magical college that's not an actual dark academic novel.

For a story where magic is so integral to the plot, they really gloss over studying and practicing anything at the school.

The first half felt like a slow YA, and the second half felt rushed and too conveniently solved. Since the book is written like Clover's memoir, the poor pacing makes sense for someone who idealized one specific year of her life. However, it did not make the actual reading experience kind of annoying.

Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Clover Hill is determined to learn magic. Her brother is one of the few survivors of a faerie attack that left him cursed during WW1. Following the attack, all doors to faerie country were locked and the study of magic was banned.

Camford, a secret magical academy, is no place for Clover. She does not have magic in her blood nor is she a member of the ‘Families.’ As a rare scholarship student and commoner, Clover finds herself ignored by her peers. That is until she meets Alden Lennox-Fontaine. Popular, charming, and a member of the ‘Families’, Alden invites her into his friend group. The four friends spend their summer together at Alden’s family home where studious experiments go awry and long kept secrets become unearthed.

Read if you like:
- folklore studies
- faeries
- dark academia

This is an excellent book. What starts out as dark academia, with a woman trying to find her way in an elite secretive university, quickly becomes more complex and the stakes continue to raise as Clover and her friends unearth more and more about the fae. I loved the complex relationships between all of the characters. Clover, Alden, Eddie, and Hero have so many layers and individualities but their friendships is what truly drives the story. I appreciated the inclusion of class and gender equality that played a role as well.

I can’t recommend this enough.

Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook Books for a free digital copy of this book. This is my honest review. Publication date: October 22, 2024.

This story smoothly blends the trauma of World War I with a magical world of a magical school and faeries. I enjoyed following Clover's journey of discovery and growth as she entered the world of magic after her brother was cursed while fighting in WWI. The first part is a wonderful coming of age story. The academic setting was very well drawn. Clover was an engaging narrator. The second part of the story was several years later, and had a different tone. The changes in the characters and friendships seemed a little unearned and harder to connect with. Overall, it was a very enjoyable historical fantasy adventure.

Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook for providing an eARC in return for my honest thoughts.

I love the way HG Parry writes. Their characters feel SO real, even when you aren't sure whether or not you can trust them. This entire book had me absolutely screaming and I didn't want to finish it, just so I could stay in their world a bit longer. I haven't stopped thinking about this book since I finished it. 5/5

Thank you NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

I am a sucker for a good dark academia. I also love a good fae story. This book took two of my favorites and slammed them together in the most unexpected and fun way. I truly enjoyed reading this book. I love that I got the same excited feelings I did when I read the HP series. I love that the writing and journey of the characters felt thoughtful and flawed and real. I am now officially a Parry enthusiast and will absolutely be devastated if there isn’t a second book. A++++

There really isn't anything Parry writes that I'm not going to adore. If I'm feeling like Peter Pan reimaginings are thoroughly played out, she writes novella with a Peter Pan take that I can't put down; when I'm feeling kind of over magical schools and dark academia generally, naturally she comes out with a book in that genre that I can't get enough of.

Camford is the hidden third university, with ties to Oxford and Cambridge but a secret from those who live and work/study at those schools. The world of magic includes departments in the government and bureaucratic roles but is also limited to aristocratic families who have magic in their blood.

The story begins during the Great War and takes place largely in the years directly following it, when the human world was remade so dramatically. While I was reading this, it called to mind works I've read recently-ish: the academia and social class issues entwined with magic and even the longing to belong in a world that doesn't want you there in the first place made me think of Babel, with a dash of the complicated loyalties and indoctrination admiration of A Memory Called Empire, and the remade world in the wake of WWI of course made me think of the phenomenal The Warm Hands of Ghosts. This books isn't like any of those, exactly, and I wouldn't say you should read it instead of those, or that if you've read those you needn't read this one. But it harmonized nicely with them and the themes in common complement one another. They're all excellent, in my opinion, and while The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door wrung my heart, it wasn't as bleak as Babel or as heavy as The Warm Hands of Ghosts.

I loved it and hope you love it, too.

I hoped for a more detailed and helpful review, but this is what I've got. If you haven't read any Parry yet, you're in for such a treat.

I received an ARC but knew I was going to be getting my own copy of the book, so this was just slightly earlier access. My opinions are my own.

The Secret History x The Raven Boys. Dark academia at its most basal state.

What I liked:
- Everything was very satisfying. Reading it just felt right. Parry captured the vibes of prestigious academic institutions really well.
- The pacing was slow, but not so slow to be boring. I felt like everything was properly fleshed out.
- Eddie. He loves plants and I love him.

What I didn't like:
- I knew the resolution by halfway through, and indeed I was mostly correct.
- Camford is a silly name
- There was so much more that could've been done with Matthew. His story is really compelling, but mostly offscreen.

What you can't convince me otherwise about (spoilers):
- There's sapphic subtext between Clover and Hero, and gay subtext between Matthew and Sam.
- Alden is a realistic character. There are people so magnetic and yet so wrong, and I'm glad that he got what he deserved.
- Dark academia has lost a lot of the "academia" bit recently, so I appreciated that so much of Hero and Eddie's stories revolved around knowledge rather than a personal issue, and those motivations were critiqued.

A fabulous story by an author whose work I've come to love. Though it seems like a riff on Harry Potter, it's much darker, more complex, and dealing with weighty things, such as imperialism, power, bigotry, class divisions, post-war trauma, manipulation, and the idea of doing something bad in the name of good.

Clover Hill is a farmgirl, and desperate to leave home. After her brother Matthew returns irreparably damaged by his experiences in WWI, including barely surviving a faerie curse that everyone knows will eventually kill him, she determines to find a way to break the curse and heal him conclusively. And she'll need magic to do it.

Gaining admission by scholarship to an esteemed and secret magical school named Camford, Clover works hard to catch up to the sons of wealthy, magical families who've been steeped in learning and casting magic since their early years. She's shunned by her peers, who are arrogant and look down on a woman from a working family, and even worse, one who is not from one of the Families who have had magic for generations.

One day, she meets Alden Lennox-Fontaine, who instantly charms and captivates her. He draws her into his small circle of friends: Hero, the only other young woman studying at Camford, and Eddie, a painfully shy young man who wants only to learn about botany, and has been bullied by the various scions also at the academy. Both are from Families, though Eddie is dismissed by his parents for not being "normal", and Hero knows she has to excel or her father will marry her off as fast as possible.

Soon, they're all studying and hanging out together. But Clover feels she has a special bond with Alden, who gradually convinces her to research the magic to open faerie doors, which were closed by agreement after the terrible incident that killed many and which Matthew barely survived.

Alden wants to open one for his own reasons, and Clover closes her eyes to the larger consequences, and cajoles the other two to aid them. They pool their knowledge together and attempt to open a door only enough to attract a fairy so Alden and Clover can make their own bargains with it. Of course, the four badly underestimate their skills and the determination and intentions of the summoned faery, and things go horribly wrong, though Clover does get one thing out of the disastrous night. But, the friendship falls apart and the four go their separate ways.

Years later, a horrifying event awakens Clover to the fact that though she's been ignoring it while building her life as a lecturer at Camden, the mess they left behind them was never going to stay secret. Deciding that they must now face up to their past actions and fix the new, more terrible and deadly mess, she calls on her bond with her Camford clique.

H.G. Parry shows us Clover's path to the magical world, and eventually to adulthood, and builds then tears apart the friendship that is the bedrock of her identity in this world.

Clover has many questions when she first enters Camford, but these are soon put aside with her punishing workload, and her slow entry into magical society. Questions such as: where is Camford located? Why do the Families have a special connection to magic? What caused the disaster at the Amiens battlefield? Why is there such a prohibition against learning about faerie magic? Though these lurk in the background of her thoughts, she quickly pushes them aside instead to revel in all she can learn, and the respect she gets from her three friends.

These questions become pertinent when the friends must come back together to save the magical world. Clover has wilfully blinded herself to the many oddities surrounding her once she's pulled into Alden's circle, and she continues to do so as an adult as she loves Camford too much to jeopardize her position with inquiries. She's totally swayed by her supposed acceptance into magical society, but quickly learns just how illusory that acceptance really is, especially in the face of the privilege, power and entitlement of the Families, and the monstrous foundation upon which everything they hold dear is built.

There are times when I found it painful to listen to how easily Clover dismissed her questions and concerns about the privileges of the Families, and how deliberately she manipulated Eddie, and it takes a shocking incident to strip her of her comfortable life and beliefs. I also wondered how she could be so fooled by Alden's charm, when all I saw was arrogance, a lack of regard for others, and terrific self-absorption, but Clover did fall hard for him, and his interest in her intelligence and curiosity no doubt was a powerful incentive to never look harder at the young man.

I loved the world Parry conjured here, and the writing is wonderful. The characters are well drawn and complicated, and Clover's maturity is wonderfully charted, from teen eager to leave home for adventure, to much older adult magician writing a history about magic and its costs. She makes numerous mistakes during the course of the novel, enchanted by the people and atmosphere of the magical world, and her awakening to the injustices running deep in this world, though slow to come, does arrive and strongly motivates her to find a better way.

The book is lovely, full of sublime writing, and I totally, totally loved this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Redhook Books for this ARC in exchange for my review.

This isn’t H.G. Parry’s finest work, but there’s still a lot to like here.

The first half of this is exceptionally good, a perfectly rendered, cozy light academia with some cleverly-rendered hints at sinister things to come.

The college environment (both the real and fantastical elements) were terrifically well drawn, as were the lightly touched on academics and the friendships. I greatly appreciated how much this feels like University does in real life, aside from the magical elements.

The second half of the story takes place after the principal characters have left school, and though the plot proceeds satisfyingly enough, it does mark a downturn in overall quality. If I have a specific complaint it’s that this got a bit high-handed in the end in a way that mirrors current trends in fiction, and also that it didn’t need a “Surprise I have a secret baby!” subplot.

Still, nobody writes immersive, cozy fantasy quite as well as Parry, and this is well worth a read, especially for the early chapters.

H.G. Parry’s The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door is a magical, heartfelt tale that feels like stepping into a beautifully woven tapestry of myth and wonder. The story follows a reluctant scholar who stumbles upon a forgotten doorway leading to the last remnants of the faerie world, setting off an adventure full of mystery, danger, and unexpected friendships. Parry’s writing is lush and lyrical, creating a world that feels both enchanting and deeply human. The book balances whimsical fantasy with poignant themes of loss, belonging, and the power of stories. It’s a little slow at times, but the rich characters and breathtaking world-building more than make up for it. If you’re into stories that mix magic with heart, this one’s a gem you won’t want to miss.

I have read a few of HG Parry’s books and I’ve loved her as an author since reading A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians and with The Scholar and the Last Fairie Door she has cemented herself as one of my favorites. Her prose is absolutely beautiful and I love her ability to make our worlds magical and lush in a way that a lot of other people writing urban fantasy are unable to. I was completely invested in the characters development as she writes such real characters who have understandable emotions and reactions to the trials they are experiencing. I love seeing her grow as an author.

Top tier historical fantasy! Parry weaves a spellbinding tale of friendship, ambition and unintended consequences. It's a richly atmospheric novel I'll be thinking about for a while.

This is my third read by this author and I think each one is better than the last. This story follows Clover in four parts that cover the various periods of her life: as she sends her beloved older brother Matthew off to fight in World War I, her studies of magic in her pursuit of a cure for Matthew’s malady after surviving a faerie attack on the battlefield from a local tutor to a magical school known as Camford, a combination of Cambridge and Oxford where she finds three like-minded friends who join in her interests of faerie magic despite the legality for their own reasons. When their endeavors culminate in a disastrous event, the book picks up eight years later slowly revealing what became of the four students and the repercussions of their foray into a dangerous magic that they didn’t quite understand.

While this book is broken into parts and sometimes it takes a moment to adjust to the changes of settings and/or chronological time from one to the next, I became equally fascinated with each as I progressed through the story. The characters were phenomenal. The complications of family, the building of friendships, the suspicions of other’s actions and their motives and priorities were all explored with a fascinating expertise. I loved the various settings especially the school and the Ashfield estate. The exploration of faerie magic and how it works in this world and the relationship to this magic and the human world was intricate and mysterious throughout especially the divisions of class and their hierarchy.

I think this story would appeal to both dark academia and fae story lovers.

Thank you to Netgalley and Orbit Books for a copy provided for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and Redhook Books for a digital advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

First off, this is a slow start. I was sure this was going go be a 4 or 3 star read, but as the story progressed I found myself wanting to turn the next page more. The prose is beautiful and I felt myself falling into the story more and more. This is a story about how toxic friendships can lead to lasting pain for those involved and how ego and youth can cause bigger problems for everyone else. Our main character is a flawed and ambitious women who recounts her past experiences within a magical school entrenched in a terrible history.

This is unfortunately a bit of backslide by Parry. I have been familiar with her work since her debut, and felt mediocre about most of her work until her recent novel "The Magician's Daughter" which I ADORED and was in fact my #1 favorite book of last year. I was hoping this novel would continue that momentum, but it fell sadly short. My biggest issue was the lack of originality. The plot falls into tiresomely familiar grooves across character, plot, and theme. I can't tell you how many novels I've read whose plot boils down to "magic British school, but with classism" and I didn't feel that TSATLFD did a good enough job of setting itself apart.

If you liked the project of Babel by R.F. Kuang, give this one a try. It might work for you.

The character work in Parry's The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door worked so well for me, as did the examination of exclusionary academics, classism, sexism, and colonialism. This is soft magic system based on faerie traditions, and the world building is not quite as detailed as I would have liked. But in both cases, that is the point. Parry is much more interested in examining the consequences of both systematic oppression of the powerless and reckless youthful defiance. I really enjoyed this one!

4.5 stars rounded up

[4.25/5] THE SCHOLAR AND THE LAST FAERIE DOOR is about wanting for the world to fit in, no matter the cost. Clover's older brother returns from WWI, still recovering from a faerie attack on the battlefield. Until then, she had not known magic existed. Now, she vows to learn it to find a way to remove the curse and save her brother. Clover works hard to get into Camford, a school of magic, where she catches the eye of Alden, one of the Families' golden boys. Their tight-knit quad of friends pushes the boundaries of magic, eventually revealing a long-held secret.

This standalone historical fantasy is from Clover's point of view, albeit told from her contemporary self as she shares the story of her youth. I appreciate this perspective because Clover can now apply an experienced eye to the situation as she reflects on past events. Youth is ambitious, but lacks the life experienced of someone older. However, Clover does not over indulge on the self reflections. That is, it does not feel like reading a diary of events; the POV is third-person limited.

The characterization of all four characters is superb. Clover is studious, driven with a philanthropical lilt due to her brother's condition, and has a desire to be accepted buried deep inside. Alden is charming, ambitious, and intelligent. Hero is elegant, discerning, and honest. And, finally, Eddie has a love of plants and is quiet, sensitive, and also quite smart. Once Clover falls in with this group I loved their dynamic--all so different, each balancing the others' shenanigans.

This friendship is exactly what Clover yearns for when she attends Camford. As an outsider, most students avoid her and refer to her as a "scholarship witch," where "witch" is derogatory in this world. She is not a member of any Family, or the original families gifted with magic. Nor is she of their social class, having grown up in a farming family. So, when she finally lands a friend group, it means the world to her. She would do anything, within reason, to stay friends forever. I liked that Parry didn't let Clover's fear of rejection completely hijack her logic. What Clover feels comes out in snippets of reflection or feeling, both as an 18-year-old and while reflecting as an adult.

The atmosphere in THE SCHOLAR AND THE LAST FAERIE DOOR is also just right. It feels like the Jazz Age, yet subdued because they are in an old magical school. So it's a blend of old at the college and new when they venture outside of the grounds. The actual story itself is well-developed, which I appreciate. But that is also at the expense of the pace, which I personally felt moved a little slowly for my tastes.

However, I cannot deny this is a well-written tale about youthful ambition, loyalty, love for family, and a desire to be accepted. How these attributes influence the other, as well as their priority to the individual, drive the characters' actions. THE SCHOLAR AND THE LAST FAERIE DOOR is a perfect for those who enjoy historical fantasy with a dash of fae.