This candle practically made itself, as Victoria and Allison’s creation is dripping with atmospheric language that transports you immediately and perhaps a little violently into the world of Blackbird Hollow (read: the intensity of my pancake cravings). 

A small town surrounded by hills and dark, fae-haunted forests, Blackbird Hollow is a tight-knit community that hides its magic well (most of the time). In the morning, you can smell the pancakes, maple syrup, and bacon from the local diner, and the sweet, rich scent of coffee and donuts from the town shop waft through the air. At night, the scent of wood smoke weaves through the streets and hills. Mountain mist, carrying with it the scent of pinesap, moss, and cedar, fills the air in the wee hours of the morning, when you just might be caught by the Wild Hunt if you’re not careful. This candle walks you through day to night in Blackbird Hollow, opening with subtle top notes of clove and maple (your trip to the local diner), and transitioning into the earthy scents of moss and pine (your walk down the forest-shadowed streets) and settling upon the rich base notes of wood smoke and embers (the town bonfire in the woods for Samhain).

I didn’t know much about the plot or the characters before I started, and I was immediately drawn in by the strange yet relatable world Victoria and Allison created. This world is like our own, but also decidedly not (grad school programs about aliens, for example), striking the perfect balance of the familiar and the unknown. [Side note: despite the implied horrors of the last few decades in this alternate world, even the precarious post-Reformation peace and uneasy sense of normality of Welcome to Blackbird Hollow registers like a dream in our own historical moment, which feels so much like the precipice of apocalypse]. So persuasive is the misty, dark, and sometimes electric atmosphere of this novel that within the first few chapters I had an intense craving for a trip to a diner in the mountains, for stacks of pancakes with coffee, for the smell of a pine forest, for a late night with friends I had just made, and a nostalgia for a place I’d never been, or at least, hadn’t been in a long time. 

These characters are real and flawed, but not in the way that people love to describe as morally grey; rather, they’re deeply human, reflecting the reality that many if not all of us end up wounded and shaped by those wounds, often seeking a recognition of that experience in the gaze of someone else, friend or stranger. I would argue that the social bonds in this book, including the central romance, are anchored by an unflagging dedication to humanity and the very idea of community itself, of the idea of what we owe to each other. 

On a personal level, while, unlike Alice, my PhD was decidedly not in Extraterrestrial Studies, I related hard to the grad school trauma dimension of this book, and also I appreciated the authentic sibling relationships, often so difficult to capture. This is romance, set in an alternate, fantastical reality, but it’s also a story of coming home to a place you’ve never been, to people who have been your home all along. To put in simply: the relationships in this book are special, and they speak to certain people. If you’re one of those people, I can confidently say you’ll love Welcome to Blackbird Hollow.

I have to admit that I was sad when this story ended. I wanted to stay in Blackbird Hollow much, much longer (same, Alice, same!) and I’m eagerly looking forward to the next installment in the series.

I hope you enjoy burning this candle as much as I enjoyed making it, and don’t forget to add Welcome to Blackbird Hollow to your Fall TBR. You can also find Victoria and Allison on Instagram.

If you enjoyed this post and/or would like to see  more candles in this vein, leave me a comment!🖤

Psst: if you love shouting out books on social media, check out this Deluxe PR Box Giveaway🍂