Part of Whimbrel House
First published 2022
Merritt Fernsby did not go looking for Whimbrel House. The remote Narragansett Bay estate simply arrived in his life as an inheritance, and he arrived at its door ready to start over. Then the doors locked behind him. The house will not let him go, and no amount of rattling handles changes that fact. Hulda Larkin shows up next, sent by the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms, a woman who has spent her career managing properties exactly like this one. Her tools are practical: augury, a kit of magical instruments, a staff trained for the strange. Her goal is to turn Whimbrel House from captor to ally. Moving in alongside Merritt is simply part of the job. What neither of them expects is how deep the house's history runs. The investigation pulls them closer together even as it grows more complicated. And the trouble is not contained to the walls. Something outside has taken an interest in the enchantments of Whimbrel House, and that threat may be harder to face than anything the building itself can throw at them. Set in 1846, this novel pairs a sharp-edged magical system with two people learning, slowly, to trust each other and the strange place they now share.
Genres: romance, mystery, fantasy, historical-fantasy
Vibes: atmospheric, gothic, intimate, mysterious, slow-burn
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, forced-proximity, found-family, slow-burn-romance
Setting: Whimbrel House, Narragansett Bay, Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms
Period: 1846
347 pages · Kindle Edition · 47North