Sarah Beth Durst is the author of fantasy books for both teens and adults. Navigating the grief brought on by Covid inspired her to turn to gentle magical storytelling where readers could feel free from danger, including in her adult cozy fantasies such as The Spellshop and Sea of Charms, and her new YA novel The Faraway Inn. Here, Durst reflects on the importance of magical worlds that offer safety, and how escapism is not a luxury, but a necessity to face troubles in our reality.

When I was little, I used to check the back of my closet every single night, in case there was an entrance to Narnia. Full confession: sometimes I still do, just in case. But my portal of choice has always been a book.

After the Covid lockdown in March 2020, I found myself escaping into magical worlds that were favorites of mine when I was a teen: Tortall, Valdemar, Pern, Newford, Damar, the Four Lands, Ingary, Luster, the Enchanted Forest... and I thought to myself, “I want to write books that make readers feel this way”—safe, comforted, filled with wonder and hope. So that’s what I set out to do—to write books that feel like a warm hug, or like a sanctuary, or like you’re sitting next to your best friend, they have their arm around you, and they’re telling you, “Everything is going to be okay.”

The Faraway Inn is a YA cozy fantasy about a 16-year-old girl who, after a devastating heartbreak, decides to spend her summer helping her eccentric great aunt manage her quaint and somewhat rundown Vermont inn—but then discovers that this fixer-upper is hiding a magical secret.

I decided to write cozy for YA because I firmly believe that everyone deserves a magical escape filled with kindness, comfort, wonder, and healing—especially teens. Teens have it rough—they can see the state of the world, as well as the problems in their own communities, families, and lives, but they typically have very little control over any of it. Worse, their pain is often dismissed or diminished or simply unseen.

I wrote The Faraway Inn for every reader who needs an escape. At its heart, The Faraway Inn is about a teen who finds her escape and, in the process, creates her own future. When Calisa goes to her great-aunt’s B&B, she doesn’t just find wonder and mystery. She finds hope. She finds love. She finds family. And she finds herself.

Here’s the most important thing to understand about escaping to a magical fictional world: it’s not about what you’re escaping from or where you’re escaping to. It’s about who you are after you return. The idea with cozy fantasy is to create a space of kindness and enchantment where people can relax and retreat and, most importantly, regroup and come back stronger.

Life can be hard. At any moment, you can be hit with loss, betrayal, or pain. And lately, the world feels as if it’s worsening every single day. There’s so much hate and cruelty permeating nearly everything, that sometimes it can feel like you’re bashing yourself against a brick wall over and over again.

The importance of magical worlds, in particular those that offer a feeling of comfort and safety, is that sometimes you need to step back, breathe, and heal those bruises, before you can resume bashing that very-necessary-to-break-down brick wall. Sometimes you need to escape the inescapable in order to be ready to face it. That’s what fantasy literature is for: not just entertainment, not just fun, but for survival of the soul and the heart.

Escape is often talked about like it’s a luxury. “That’s my guilty pleasure,” people say. But I believe that escape isn’t an indulgence; it’s a necessity. Every so often, it’s necessary to walk through a magical door, so that you can then return strong enough to live and fight and win.

Portals into magical worlds—whether they’re a closet door or a book—are a reminder that there’s light after darkness, there’s love and friendship, and there’s wonder and enchantment and joy waiting to be found. They’re a reminder that even on days when it feels as if every door has slammed shut, there’s still another door out there to walk through, even if you don’t know how to open it yet.

The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst. Delacorte, $14.99 paper Mar. 31; ISBN 979-8-217-02430-8