3.5 stars

This book confirmed that dark academia is not the best genre for me. Theoretically, it should work and it should also work pretty well for me, because everything sounds pretty good, but… but in the end, I enjoyed a few of the dark academia books I read, and usually the ones that are less “typical” so.. yeah, it may not be the best choice for me. And my main problem here is because of vibes. So it is pretty hard to say what didn’t really work for me, because it is hard to describe vibes.
And, generally speaking, I can appreciate the books, like this one is a pretty well-developed book (and I will talk a bit more about that in a second) but if we talk about personal enjoyment… I did not really enjoy myself while reading.

That said, let’s focus on the book!
It is like the author did a checklist for dark academia tropes and things and vibes, and then proceeded to check them out, one after another. In a really methodical way, I have to say, and giving each one the time to grow and develop on pages. It gives me some “scientific” vibes (scientific is not really appropriate, but more like a historian doing the work, it has scholarly vibes not only for the reading part, but also for the writing. I am making sense here??) like this was a kind of experiment, sort of.

If you loved The Secret History, If We Were Villains, and Death in the Spires, you’ll love this one too.
They all follow the same exact script. Honestly, I enjoyed K.J. Charles quite a lot, while the other two didn’t work so well for me. Mostly it’s about the vibes, they are pervaded by what felt to me like malaise, and I am not a fan. But there is also the fact that they are, all things considered, not high stakes. Mind me, it made sense, obviously, but still, when all was said and done I was always left with an “okay, so what?” feeling. A sense of dissatisfaction because everything was, in the end, so small, at least in a sense.
Well, with this book this part is not here. This is a dark academia that follows the script to a t, but with high stakes. And I was so happy about it!
The magical elements and the stakes were an interesting addition to it all.
But, simultaneously, I was expecting something more, on the side of personal enjoyment. I appreciated a lot of things in this book, the magic was interesting, and the author is good at describing the effect of the war. This book has a historical quality to it and great attention to detail, the author did a great job in this respect, and objectively I can appreciate it, but… but I wasn’t so invested in all of this, I appreciated it but didn’t really enjoy it.

So, I was hoping for more, but still, I think the author did a great job, and if you want to read a great dak academia book with magic and faeries… well, search no more!

2.5 stars
My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley UK for a free eARC of The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H. G. Parry.
A blend of historical fantasy post World War I and magical academy with a few darker aspects and faerie.
This was my first book by the author and it started so promising. For some reason the first chapter made me think I will witness a dark academia in a fantasy setting, but my expectations were way too high.
The prose and the plot are accessible and easy to follow along and I think this book is suitable for both young adult and adult readers.
Personally, I could not help comparing it to "Babel" by R. F. Kuang and feeling disappointed as it did not had the same intensity, nor the same honest portrait of the darkness behind academia.
There were a few surface level commentaries about how patriarchal academics were and how difficult it was for women to have access to university or higher education.
My biggest complaint is about Lady Anjali Winter. She is a secondary character from India that married an English lord. We are being told this fact once and trough out the book she is mentioned as Lady Winter. She cautions the main heroine that academia is difficult for women and she has been driven out because of that. Nothing about RACISM which I am sure she experienced much more than lone discrimination based on sex. So that representation is just there to thick a box the same as the afterthought of having one of the main characters being gay, but only being revealed in the last part of the book and not actually having it explored at all.

"The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door" is a dark academia fantasy novel brimming with forbidden magic, faerie curses, and ambitious and privileged scholars. Clover Hills is unaware of this secret magical world until her brother returns from the front because he was cursed by a murderous fae. Clover decides to enter into the alluring world of Camford, a university hidden from mortal eyes, in order to save her brother, but also to become a scholar and to fit into that élite world ruled by Families.

The themes explored in this book are numerous and the author did a great job depicting Clover and Hero's condition as women in a university mostly attended by men. Clover is forced to endure even more sneering glances and muffled prejudices because she doesn't come from one of the Families that rule over the magical world, she's a farmer girl and she's willing to do anything to fit in.
The book is set at the end of the Great War, 1920 and it takes place in this university called Camford that can be reached by crossing a portal located in Oxford or Cambridge. I loved the setting, how it really seemed like part of the plot itself, as though it were a character. We explore Camford from Clover's point of view and she is in love with that place, it instantly felt like home since the moment she set foot in the university and it transpired from her every word.

The novel is divided into four parts that take place in different places and time periods. We follow Clover, Eddie, Alden, and Hero since their first year at Camford until they're almost 30. Even though the most action-packed scenes unfold during the second half of the book, I adored reading about their blooming friendship: an unlikely found family founded on their own loneliness. We read about four friends whose bond quickly grows into family and whose relationship was also based on lies and ambition, especially from Alden's and Clover's side. Even if all these characters are visibly flawed and despicable, and even if their choices are extremely selfish most of the time, their love for each other is palpable. So reading about their relationship and how it evolved turned out to be one of the most beautifully written things I read this year.
These characters will forever be part of me. Their bond and that ending will surely haunt me.

"The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door" is a character-driven book. It's Clover that narrates the event from her point of view, she's already experienced what she's recounting and she felt so much like an unreliable narrator, which I love, especially in dark academia novels.
The world building and the magic system aren't as developed as I hoped them to be, and yet it wasn't the whole point of the story, so it didn't ruin the book. But on the contrary, it matched with how the novel was written.

Do yourself a favor and read this book, especially if you're searching for something that feels like The Secret History or Babel, but with the magic and vibes of Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries.

First of all: I find the blurb very unfortunate. The rough outline of the first part would have been enough. In hindsight, however, I feel that the short section about what happens years later is too much of a spoiler. Especially in view of how much of the story takes place in 1920/21.

The book itself reads like a very successful mixture of Frankenstein and Harry Potter.
Well, the comparison to Harry Potter always comes up quickly in the context of magic schools. In this case, I'm mainly referring to the feel of the world. How the protagonist, who had no idea about magic at the beginning of the book, arrives there and is ostracised by her ‘nobler’ classmates. How she makes friends (or rather how her friends find her) and how their relationship develops. It has to be said, however, that this relationship is developed in a much more nuanced way here, which is hardly surprising as the book is aimed at an older audience than HP.
There are also the various intertextualities with Frankenstein. The dark foreshadowing that you are about to make a mistake, for example. Or the fact that the protagonist bases her basic education on the outdated studies of Aggripa (and others), for which she is initially ridiculed by her professors - but which later turns out to be very useful, or devastating. In general, the motif of an ambitious and clever protagonist who wants to discover something revolutionary, only for her findings to make her life difficult later on, is very reminiscent of Frankenstein.

The setting of the time between the two world wars is refreshingly unused in today's literature, which also contributed to an enjoyable reading experience. Only the overly long chapters sometimes detracted from this. But that can of course be overlooked.
I found this experience very enriching and look forward to reading more of them. This was one of my favorites of the year! 5/5*

If somebody took everything good from The Secret History and Harry Potter, blended the ingredients to make them even better, it would result in H.G. Parry's THE SCHOLAR AND THE LAST FAERIE DOOR.

In the aftermath of WWI, Clover Hill, desperate to save her older brother from a faerie curse, puts her efforts into and succeeds at learning magic, enough to get a scholarship to Camden, Britain's secret, magical university. She is befriended by a group of students who recognise her desire to learn about fae magic and involve her into their own, forbidden doings. It's a story about despair, about friendship, about academia, and it's written in the best way you could possibly imagine.

I adored everything about this. From the prose and world-building to character development and their relationships, the intricate ways everything in this universe is connected, and a magic system that is simple yet perfect for the purposes of the narrative. I could spend hours talking about this book. I cried, I laughed, I loved and I lost, and for the time I spent reading this, I existed in an entirely different universe. I wish I could read it all over again. I wish there were sequels and prequels and spin-offs just as much as I don't, because it was perfect just as it was.

It's relatively slower-paced, so if you're someone expecting action from the get-go, this may not be the right fit. A lot of the story deals with the characters and their relationships, which is why The Secret History kept popping into my head, though I'd argue this is better written. The first part is perfect. It's everything I could've wanted from a book, as a child who grew up reading Harry Potter and the like, and eventually turned to dark academia. It's as if it was written for me. After the time-skip, things pick up and so does the action, everything comes to a high, and it's a brilliant pay-off.

It's been a while since I've read a book I loved this much, but I know I'll be recommending it to absolutely everybody for as long as I live.

After loving H.G. Parry's previous books, I was thrilled to get an early copy of The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door through NetGalley!

This historical dark academia fantasy is set in post-WWI England, where young Clover Hill journeys into a dangerous faerie magic world to lift a curse afflicting her brother, a survivor of a faerie-related wartime disaster.
She earns a scholarship to Camford, a renowned magical university, where she meets Alden Lennox-Fontaine and dives into forbidden studies, uncovering secrets that alter her views on friendship, loyalty, and reality itself.

While the book is beautifully written and atmospheric, I felt it lacked originality and depth in its characters.
Given Parry’s previous works and the intriguing plot—which reminded me of favorites like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Fairies—I expected to be obsessed with this book.
While enjoyable, it didn’t quite resonate as deeply as I’d hoped.
Perhaps it's just been a tough year with new releases for me, anyway I'll definitely be reading Parry’s future books!

I really loved this book and was sad when the story ended.
It takes us from Clover living on a farm with her siblings and her brother coming home from war with a fairy curse.
She works hard to learn magic as she is not from one of the families who have it in their veins.
She gets a scholarship to Camford where she meets Hero, Alden and Eddie.
We follow their friendship and what happens when they open a fairy door.
I loved the characters and descriptions of Camford the time between the wars, clothes etc.
I really liked Hero, Eddie and Clover also Richard and Mathew.
Alden I wasn't so fond of although I understand why he did some of the things he did.
These people and their stories stay with you long after the book is finished.
I will certainly seek out more of this author's books.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley.

This was a gem of a book.

At its core, The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door is a love letter to academia and its unconquerable spirit, but at the same time it doesn't shy away from criticising very real issues still present within it like class or gender inequality. This all gets entwined in a story about ambition, the value of friendship and the lengths one would go for knowledge.

The historical and fantasy aspects of the book were truly brilliantly written, but it was the characters that truly stole the show. Never have I read a friendship dynamic so beautifully, so heartachingly real and complex; all the main characters were perfectly flawed (including our unreliable narrator), putting their friendship in balance with their wants and ambitions, but still sticking by each other.

The pacing of the book is fittingly slow, as this is a book that needs not be rushed, but relished one word at a time.
H.G. Parry is trully a master of historical fantasy,and I will surely pick up more of her books in the future.

Thank you netgalley and little brown book group for giving me the opportunity to read this book in advance for an honest opinion!

This book has been out in the world for a couple of days now; this means I am a couple of days late in reviewing it but to finish this book took me longer than expected. A blessing and a curse, truly, because I wanted to live within its pages forever, but the pace is really slow. This is ultimately the only flaw I can find in this book: the first half seems nothing will ever happen, and then there is the last third of the book😅
As I said, though, I didn’t particularly mind it, because there is plenty to make up for it:

First thing first, the characters. I have rarely read about protagonists so well written, fully fledged in their rights and wrongs, their personalities so distinct I could imagine myself befriending them. Clover Hill is an unreliable narrator and her point of view, in retrospect, gives you everything you need to know (or at least what she thinks you need to know).
This narrative device got me hooked even through the slower sections of this book, because I really felt part of the group and related to Clover, and to her insecurities and ambitions.

Next, there is the story. You know me, I can’t miss the opportunity to read about scholars, faeries, enchanted universities and magic. Even more so when those elements are entwined with history and transcend the fantasy genre to deal with very real issues in the modern world: power, gender, class, knowledge, these are the main points here and I think the author did a brilliant job in pulling all the strings together to build a story that is not only entertaining and magical, but speaks to us to the very core.
Who are we, if not the relationships we build and the choices we make?

4.5/5⭐

I was intrigued by the premises - dark academia vibes with magic? Count me in!

This book was a lot cozier than I expected. I don't always love cozy books, but I really liked this one. I love how the characters were characterised, how their relationships grew and changed, and how it changed them as well. And the world H.G. Parry created was great! I found the magic system quite interesting and original (especially when you learn everything about it at the end of the book)!

I really enjoyed reading the book, even though it took me a long time to finish it. I think I enjoyed it while reading it, and I was there in the moment, but it was slow enough that I didn't feel any rush to finish it. The second half of the book has a faster pace and a lot happens. Some of the twists I guessed, but one I really did not see it coming. I liked how the narrator left hints here and there, but also sometimes kept information from us.

The jumps in time were a little weird at first, but I got used to them in the end.

Cozy fantasy are still not my favourite genre, but I really did enjoy this!

I am absolutely obsessed with this Book.

We follow Clover, a farmers daughter who's brother has been afflicted with a Faerie curse. In order to help and possibly find a cure for him she attends Camford, a magical school where she hopes to find the cure. So begins her and the friends makes story.

H G Parry has a way of writing that completely enraptures the reader. This is my first book from this author and I can assure you I will be picking up all the others. I was fully immersed and entirely invested throughout this whole story. From the very first word to the absolute last, I could not put this book down. Truly, I read it all in one sitting.

The blend between Fantasy, magic and dark academia is seamless. The world building, wonderfully complex without becoming cumbersome and the characters well fleshed out and felt real. There is more that I would wish to say, but I don't want to spoil anyone for the story. The plot is twisty and clever and had a most satisfying ending.

The characters fascinated me. Even the ones that I did not like I wanted to learn more about. Which is a feeling very few authors have been able to elicit from me.

Overall, this an exceptionally well written book, with interesting characters, well thought out plot that even when pacing slows, is never boring. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys dark academia, fantasy and clever books. A book I will re-read over and over again and will purchase the hardback as soon as it releases. If I could give it more than 5 stars, I would.

Thank you to Netgalley and littlebrownbooks for the Advanced Copy. All opinions are my own and I am posting them voluntarily.

Eddie has wanted to hide from the world. Hero had wanted to make it new. Alden and I, in our own ways, loved the old, safe world -- Ashfield and Camford, tradition and beauty, the sunlit days of our childhoods before the Great War.
But the world had never been safe, not for everybody. It had been broken for a very long time, and the war had only shown those cracks for what they were. [loc. 5056]
Clover Hill has grown up knowing that magic isn't for her: it's the realm of the Families, the aristocrats who have magical blood. Nevertheless, when her brother Matthew returns from war terribly wounded by a faerie attack at the Battle of Amiens, she becomes determined to find a way to heal him. She enters Camford, founded by the magical department of Oxford University and in the thirteenth century, as a scholarship witch, somewhat out of her depth both socially and academically. When golden youth Alden Lennox-Fontaine finds her reading a book about faerie magic -- which is banned, and all doors to the faerie realm supposedly closed -- he finds her intriguing enough to draw into his coterie. Clover becomes friends with Hero, Eddie and Alden, and they discover a shared interest in the faerie doors and where they might lead. But the doors were shut for a reason, and their daring experiments have catastrophic consequences.

Dark academia at its best, with a thoughtful exploration of class, privilege and prejudice. I've encountered some elements of this world, and this plot, before: for example, in The Golden Enclaves and a plethora of other works where the happiness of the many depends on the suffering of a few. There are plenty of novels about 'a school for magic' and the intense friendships that outsiders can form: there are plenty of novels about hubris. For me, this novel succeeded because of Clover's voice, and her (impulsive and sometimes immature) personality. The pace is slow and considered, the characters diverse in a period-typical way (Clover's mentor, Lady Winter, is from Madras; one of the characters is gay, one is bisexual; working-class characters as vividly drawn as the aristocrats). Though much of the first half of the novel (set in 1920) takes place in Camford, the second half sees Clover visiting London and Paris.

One minor complaint is the lack of Brit-picking: nobody in 1920 would think of anything as 'the size of a fifty-pence piece', and there are occasional unBritish turns of phrase ('you didn't have to come meet me'). Overall, though, I enjoyed this very much, and am now keen to read Parry's other novels.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy, in exchange for this full honest review. UK Publication Date is 24 OCT 2024.

4.5*
I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

In The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door we follow Clover, attending a magical university with the goal of saving her brother from a faerie curse, as she and her group of typically codependent academic friends get themselves involved in scientific areas best left untouched.

The plot is divided into two halves, where the first one is a classic, dark academia story about a group of friends at a university, who are rivals but also love each other above anything else, and all have different academic motivations and fears. Sort of like a “this is how it started, back when we were young and reckless, before The Horrors” type of vibe. I’ve seen people say they found this first section slow, and I disagree; I was so immersed in the atmosphere (such nice prose, by the way) and the characters, and so intrigued by where the story was going. One of my favourite aspects was the complex character dynamics, especially since these characters are somewhat morally grey, as well as getting to dive into their personal issues, primarily the two female characters existing as women in the academic world. On that account, I preferred this first half over the second, more fast paced one.

In the second half of the book, a few years have passed, the characters are adults, and we dive into a bit more of a political intrigue. There’s tension, betrayals, we don’t know who to trust, but I honestly found this to be less suspenseful than the backstory, which I think is because it was more straight-forward. The political themes around socio-economic class and colonialism were perhaps a bit clumsy, but it didn’t impact my enjoyment of the book in any major way. The ending, however, was one of my favourite parts, it was perfectly bittersweet and tied together both the plot and the relationships within the central cast of characters so well.

The weird thing about this book is the middle bit, the transition between the two sections. The first half ends in a way I found a bit anticlimactic, considering the whole first half has been building up towards this disastrous event that ends up being not super disastrous. Then we go immediately into the catalyst event of the second half, followed by a recap of what has happened in between, two parts I felt should have been in the opposite order. This made the pace of the whole thing feel a bit off, and I think a bit of rearranging could have been beneficial.

Weird pacing or not, this is objectively better than The Magician’s Daughter (as much as I loved that too), and I hope I get to read many many more books by this author in the future, I’m very fond of her style and her vibe. I’d strongly recommend this book, and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves!

This is my fifth book of HG Parry’s and she never fails to impress. Like The Magician’s Daughter before it, this is a gentler, more involved story than the Magical Histories. But this also has a fullness that the previous book did not, following every moment of the deep friendships that this book is about before launching into its latter-day crisis. Rich, indulgent, we follow the whole of Clover Hill’s introduction to a secret world of magical Families and the magical university that binds them all together. We ser her whole life woven into those of her three best friends, all Family members and lifelong magic users, as she enjoys the wealth, privilege and power that these associations bring. But this is a world of isolationism, class and colonialism that points to something truly rotten at its core and, in dabbling with the faerie magicks that threaten this world, Clover and her friends commit precisely the kinds of crimes that unearned power lead to. Undoing those crimes becomes the work of their lifetimes.

This story is opulent and warm and nostalgic, but also marked by cruelty, deception and betrayal. If F Scott Fitzgerald had written more fantastically, this is what he’d have written. Loved it. More please.

Sometimes you read a book, and it is hard to find the words to do it justice in describing how you feel about what you have read. This is one of those books.

Having loved H.G. Parry's previous works, I was so excited to get a copy of this to read, and hoped I would enjoy it as much as I had the Shadow Histories duology. I was wrong - I loved this so much more than I could have anticipated.

There were so many twists and turns in this book, and yet it all weaved together so cleverly and ended, not tied up neatly in a bow, for that would have felt unsatisfying, and untrue to the nature of the story. Instead, it all comes together like a Christmas present wrapped by an excitable child - not perfect (for who is), but containing the best gift you could receive.

This book is such a human book, such a moving book, and so masterfully written. Every character is flawed, and at various points, several of them are deeply unlikable, and that is such a strength in this book. Parry does not shy away from the flawed nature of people, and instead uses it to remind us to expect the unexpected. Alden is the perfect example of a flawed nature, and used so well to round out the story.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and already wish I could read it all over again for the first time!

Clover Hill is a farmer's daughter. Her brother is fighting against Germany at the front, until he is struck by a faerie curse at the battle of Amiens. Until then, she had no idea magic exists. She dedicated herself to studying it, and gets a scholarship to attend Camford (the magical counterpart to Oxbridge), hoping to learn magic that will her brother. This is only the start of the book, but anything I say beyond that would involve unforgivable spoilers.

This book was A. LOT. And I mean that in the best possible way. As others have mentioned, it's a historical fantasy/dark academia reminiscent of Babel and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. And while I liked both of those books, I really loved this one - while there are other books like it, HG Parry managed balance between plot, world-building/atmosphere, and social commentary better than anyone I've read (and that's usually my main criticism with books like this one). This may sound weird, but I thought it was wonderfully thorough.

The writing is beautiful and atmospheric, and the characters, while not always particularly likable, are wonderfully human. The story is written from the perspective of Clover, telling her story decades after it took place. The first half is a wonderfully slow build-up to an event you'd expect to be the conclusion. But then there's the second half, which takes 8 years later and is the much faster-paced story of the repercussions of 'the event'. This book is a marathon, not a sprint, and I enjoyed every second of it. I don't think it'll be for everyone, but that's a matter of taste rather than quality. If you love historical fantasy and dark academia, and want to read something to get lost in for a few days, this one's for you!

Set after WW1, this is a blend of Emily Wilde, Babel with a hint of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Clover Hill is an ordinary girl with no clue that a magical world exists until her brother returns from war suffering from a near-fatal brush with a faerie curse. Clover learns that the magic world is closely guarded by the Families but that magic can be learnt by anyone and that there are doorways in Oxford & Cambridge leading to the magical university of Camford.

When Clover makes it to Camford as a student, she stands out not just for being from a non-magical family, but also because she is a scholarship student and a female one at that. Fortunately, she soon finds three friends, Alden, Hero & Eddie, who scoop her up into their more privileged world. They set about investigating the dangerous faerie doors - with devastating consequences for all.

This is a mix between cosy fantasy and dark academia - the world of Camford is quite magical and enchanting, with trees growing through the buildings, strange plants flowering in the grounds and an enormous, potentially dangerous library to explore - but there are also some darker elements lurking as well with the politics and prejudices of the time.

I loved the setting and the descriptions of Camford and I liked Clover and her journey in this new world and how this changes and impacts her relationship with her family.
There is a timeskip partway through which makes perfect sense for the plot, but I would have preferred maybe a few short chapters bridging the divide, maybe with a glimpse of what was happening to the main characters in that time. I just felt that the abruptness of the change was slightly lost by immediately jumping forward. But this is also a common complaint for me that I would like a bit more detail- I like a slow book that gives me lots of information, like Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, so when I find an interesting world, I want more of it.

An enchanting read with a dark undercurrent.

✨️ FIVE STAR REVIEW ✨️

In 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗙𝗮𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗿 we follow Clover, determined to find a cure for her brother's faerie curse by studying at England's premiere magical academy - Camford (accessed via the Oxbridge, brilliant). But with few female students and even fewer from working-class backgrounds getting in will be hard, and fitting in even harder.

So when Clover finds herself suddenly part of the "in crowd" - going to parties, sneaking into the magically-warded library, and spending summers at country estates - it all seems to good to be true. Will Clover let herself get carried away in this world of dangerous fae magic?

This book was just *made for me*. I've been craving something that read like 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' for MONTHS and ooh did this hit the spot. It's is proper, academic-heavy academia, complemented by a fantastic cast of morally-grey characters, all with their own histories and motivations. I got carried away in the characters' love for scholarship and each other, and really believed in the decisions this led them to make.

I absolutely loved my time spent in the world of 'The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door' and am now super excited to read H.G. Parry's precious novel, 'The Magician's Daughter' which has been sat on my TBR for the last year (whoops).

If this all sounds like a bit of you, 'The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door' is out in *less than a week* on Thursday 24 October.

Emily Wilde meets Babel with a skillful blend of historical fantasy based on WW1 and dark academia? YES! A million times YES! I loved every second of this book and once I started reading, I could not put it down again. If you love traditional dark academia like The Secret History, this one is definitely for you.

The characters are well-developed, the prose is beautiful, and the plot was captivating from beginning to end, although a bit slow at times. I didn't even mind that the book was more slow-paced than my usual preference, because that way the relationships between the characters developed organically and nothing felt forced.

Since we're talking about characters, I feel like it's worth mentioning that I loved every character in this book so much! They are all so fleshed out and all their virtues and flaws make them so lovable. They all stand to lose something, or they've lost it already, and it's in their nature to fight for it and try to get it back at any cost; the author did a wonderful job of making them impossible to hate even in their most damning circumstances. I felt a pang in my heart whenever something happened between them or one of them felt sad, or lonely, or betrayed. I'm sure all of them will continue to live a long time in my mind rent-free, and that's one of the reasons why I cried when I learned this is a stand-alone.

I highly recommend The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door to anyone who is a fan of dark academia and/or Emily Wilde and Babel.

I'm a huge fan of H G Parry and her books featuring an alternative Great Britain wh
ere only an elite is able to do magic are always a treat.
There's history and there great fantasy, a complex world building that always keeps me hooked.
Some could find it a bit slow at the beginning but I don't think you can understand what makes Clover choose an elite university and how she was able to attend it.
It's an exciting story, there's a sense of doom and something dangerous in the future.
An exciting and intriguing read, highly recommended
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine