Why You'll Love This
A woman who spent a century cooking for faeries now audits their contracts — and somehow that premise is the most charming thing in fantasy right now.
- Great if you want: fae worldbuilding with wit, bureaucratic humor, and real heart
- The experience: breezy but layered — cozy with genuine stakes underneath
- The writing: McCarty balances dry humor and warmth without letting either undercut the other
- Skip if: you want dark or morally complex fae fiction — this leans light
About This Book
Poppy Hill has lived more than a century in the land of the fae, stolen from her Montana homestead as a child and put to work as a cook in the Wild King's castle. Now back in the human world, she navigates the fine print of faerie contracts for a living — until one badly negotiated bargain forces her back Otherside to clean up the mess. At its core, this is a story about someone who has survived impossible things and still has to figure out who she is on the other side of them. The stakes are genuinely dangerous, the faerie world is genuinely strange, and the emotional weight underneath the whimsy earns its place.
McCarty writes with a voice that manages to be funny and tender at the same time, which is harder than it looks. The magical bureaucracy angle — contracts, loopholes, the grinding paperwork of enchantment — gives the world a texture that feels fresh rather than borrowed. The pacing moves like a good conversation: purposeful but never breathless. Readers who appreciate wit layered over real feeling, and fantasy that trusts them to keep up, will find this one sticks with them.