Title: The Solstice Cabin
Series: Flos Magicae
Author: Arden Powell
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 95 Pages
Category: Holiday Romance, Fantasy
Rating: 3.5 Stars
At a Glance: If you’re looking for something a little different and a bit fantastical this holiday season, a story that reunites two friends and gathers together their fears, strength, and courage until they become something more, then wraps it all in a bit of lore and mysticism, The Solstice Cabin supplies that plus a happy ending.
Content Note: Discussions of a past suicide
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Six months ago, David’s best friend disappeared from the city. Now, David has found him tucked away in a secluded cabin in the heart of the Great White North. Amaruq begs David not to ask why he left without saying goodbye, but David can’t forgive the panic and heartache Amaruq put him through. Not without an explanation. And with winter closing in, David can’t exactly turn around and go straight back home.
Amaruq has always kept his personal life closely guarded. Between his parents’ mysterious disappearance twenty years earlier, his powers that only come out in the cold, and his reason for abandoning his comfortable city job, David hardly knows him.
As the snow piles up and the nights grow colder, Amaruq’s secrets gradually come to light, and David realizes he has only ever scratched the surface of who Amaruq really is. He has until the spring thaw to learn Amaruq’s story and understand the man he barely recognizes anymore—and find the nerve to confess his own feelings, and tell his best friend why he couldn’t just let him go.
Review: The Solstice Cabin is a different kind of holiday romance. There is not an overabundance of seasonal cheer in its pages as Arden Powell leads their readers to the story’s happy ending. There is hurt and comfort, and there is healing from the pain of loss and misunderstanding. There is fear among its characters’ confessions. And it all takes place in a magical and isolated winter wonderland, in the early years of the 20th century when the love that existed between David and Amaruq conjured its own dangers and conflicts.
Love moves mountains in this cozy story. David’s sorrow for Amaruq’s sudden and unexplained disappearance is what drives him into the frozen tundra of Canada’s Great White North, much to his own peril. His search for Amaruq’s cabin is as much a search for answers that will help David overcome the anger and hurt he feels at being abandoned by his best friend. There are extenuating circumstances that Amaruq couldn’t share, though, and the business of slowly revealing those is what gradually shifts the momentum of the story.
The barren expanses of snow and ice are such a lovely counterpart to the loneliness and estrangement David and Amaruq feel, even in each other’s presence. The wildness and wonderment and mysticism and awe inspired by the setting complements their finally confessing their love for each other. Their shared pain and the healing that follows will ultimately be their most solemn connection as Amaruq’s magic becomes a sort of love language for David. I loved how all the otherworldly events, nature’s own magic, influenced their story.
If you’re looking for something a little different and a bit fantastical this holiday season, a story that reunites two friends and gathers together their fears, strength, and courage until they become something more, then wraps it all in a bit of lore and mysticism, The Solstice Cabin supplies that plus a happy ending.
You can buy The Solstice Cabin here:
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