The Winter Folk
Jen Julian
Paperback/Ebook/Audio
ISBN: 978-0316580496
Run For It, July 21 2026, 369 pgs

Hidden pathways in Appalachia lead to Deerhaven, a fully serviced mountain resort open only from winter to spring solstice for a very particular kind of customer—the Winter Folk. These often-monstrous patrons from other realms rely on a very human staff plucked from the region to satisfy their petty whims and clean up their messes, whether mundane or magical. One of the housekeepers is a woman of many names who prefers to go by Moth, the moniker bestowed on her by Deerhaven’s enigmatic host, Mr. Oslin. He’s in charge of managing the staff and the guests, gaining their affection despite his uncertain origins. When relationships between the two groups are tested, so are Moth’s loyalties, resulting in chaos that takes almost a generation to understand, let alone resolve. It’s only when she returns with her own daughter nearly twenty years after her last shift that Moth even begins to understand what truly went wrong.

There’s a lot to enjoy about this story in a lot of different ways. It starts as a good, clean fairy tale and slowly gives way to horror, with some interesting mother-daughter dynamics and observations on the dynamics of social mobility peeking through. There are a lot of very well-executed weird, scary, and gross moments in this book. There are also some great moments of human relationships in their most unvarnished and vulnerable state. This leads to some unexpected shocks when characters face consequences and reap rewards they may not deserve. It’s not a spoiler to say that nothing goes quite right at Deerhaven—the book tells us that from the beginning—but just how wrong things can go, and who for, is somehow the kind of thing you don’t expect in a fairy tale but see all the time in real life.

As a main character, Moth is far more likable and interesting than she has any right to be, given the way she sometimes behaves. She’s an emotionally volatile person whose choices have highly debatable merit but having her narrate her experiences as a lost twenty-something desperate for approval from the vantage point of a determined forty-something hoping to make amends balances her messiness out just enough. She’s a great example of how people don’t automatically stop making dumb decisions once they’re out of their twenties. Sometimes the shapes of the dumb decisions just change.

Moth’s friends and the patrons she serves are also really well crafted. In the real world, we sometimes sense that no matter how well you get along with some people, you may never really know them for who they are entirely. This book plays on this idea beautifully. It’s very clear that everyone Moth comes in contact with has their own lives and motivations far outside of their interactions with her, although she doesn’t always realize that in time. But they don’t really know her either, and not everyone is lucky enough to live to regret it.

It helps that some of the other characters are literally otherworldly creatures. The guests of Deerhaven are all very reminiscent of Appalachian faerie stories, although they don’t all seem to come directly from that source. They’re all weird and wild in ways that are not at all human, but their personalities are entirely so. You can see why Moth likes her job, despite the trials of dealing with the occasional many-eyed and mandibled guest. The Deerhaven guests are really likable, even when they’re at their most eldritch. They’re described in beautiful, evocative language that gives just enough to plant a seed in the reader’s imagination and lets it bloom later with little hints, here and there, about what each guest might really be.

This was an absorbing, entertaining read that balances horror, fantasy, and real-world relational worries beautifully. Check it out if you’re a fan of Charles De Lint’s Newford novels or Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series.