But when he gets to the house he realizes something is very wrong… shifting rooms, melting ceilings, and his new residence doesn’t seem to want him to leave.

Adore a book with loveable characters (Project Hail Mary, Remarkably Bright Creatures), and here’s another book that ticked that box. I realize it fits with the time period, which is why I'm very glad we're no longer living in those antiquated times! She and Merritt grow closer as the investigation progresses, but the house's secrets run deeper than they anticipated. After an entire book of those feelings growing, and after Merritt laid his heart out so beautifully for her, I closed the last page extremely unsatisfied. This mostly lovely "family", house, and island made me want to stay in this world but something, someone is planning to destroy it.The good guys are sweet and adorable, the bad guys are evil and yet you see how they got there and can empathize, the other characters have enough depth that you want to know more of their stories in later books. We don't get too much back story to the characters until the latter part of the novel and so end up with strangers watching them react to things. I had a little trouble getting into the characters at the start, but by the end, I’ve found much to love about both Merrit and Hulda. The ending left me happy, but also a little bereft thinking I would have to say goodbye to everyone at Whimbrel House.

As both of them are in their thirties, it is funny to see them so clumsy and almost juvenile around each other, but the author has written the reasons for this so well that it doesn’t jar. The plot moves along well and the characters grow and develop (growing on the reader as well) as the plot progresses. I ached for the event that turned a frightened boy into a villain, laughed at the acronym BIKER, and enjoyed reading. Some will not bother to look beyond the cover; others will find the entire tome utterly captivating.Prepared as she is with augury, a set of magic tools, and a new staff trained in the uncanny, Hulda’s work still proves unexpectedly difficult. We also earn a small commission on affiliate links to Apple, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and Booksamillion. But never fear, thirty four year old Hulda Larkin, of the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms (BIKES), arrives to save Merritt from his enchanted house. Merritt and Hulda are fantastic together, him so messy and disorganized, her so strictly controlled and structured.

Here in a fictional Boston, Holmberg has created yet another magical universe with its own rules and attributes, in 1800s America. This book ended up on my list of favorite books I’ve read in 2022, and it's near the very top of that list. Not so scary that older kids couldn't handle it (and to be honest, they would probably handle it better than I did. Each has been hurt in the past and they have their guards up to avoid letting others get close but even the house knows they are attracted to each other before too long. One of the best reads of this year, so happy there will be more stories of this fantastic gang, Heir of Uncertain Magic.Even though I occasionally thought it moved a little slowly, I truly liked this book and would recommend it. Honestly, I can't even tell you what really happened in this book and I probably should have put it down without it being finished.