Review: "The Faraway Inn" by Sarah Beth Durst

The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst
Published April 2026 via First Ink
★★★★

Calisa's looking for an escape this summer—she's recovering from a broken heart, and her great-aunt's inn, deep in Vermont without even a whisper of mobile data, seems like the place to be. Only: Aunt Zee doesn't want her there. And the inn has fallen into disrepair. And the closer Calisa looks, the more she understands that the inn is a little more...complicated...than Calisa first thought.

I read this largely on the strength of The Lake House, which gripped me by the throat for much of the book. The Faraway Inn is something else entirely—still a delight to speed through, but much more on the "charming" end of the scale than the "throat-gripping" end. I'm reminded of the phone game Matchington Mansion (which I did not reinstall when I had to get a new phone, because it is too much of a time suck), in which rooms gradually open up to the player...new place after new place to discover and restore. The inn isn't quite like that (we don't get enough details of, e.g., the library), but...at the same time, it kind of is. Every time a door opens, Calisa discovers something entirely new to her.

I was prepared for, I don't know, dark forces trying to bring the inn down, but the reality of the book is a lot calmer. There are problems, and Calisa ends up having to do quite a lot of problem-solving (and quite a lot of work), but not so much a Big Bad. I could have used a little more by way of details about what went wrong and how they're sure there's a long-term fix, but the general vibe is just very cozy in a way that turned out to be just what I was looking for in a book at the time.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.