The Folklore of Forever

The Folklore of Forever by Sarah Hogle is Hogle's 2025 second instalment in the Moonville series, following the events of Old Flames and New Fortunes and returning readers to the small, quietly supernatural town of Moonville, Ohio. Each book in the series follows a different member of the Tempest family, and here the spotlight falls on Zelda Tempest — a published author of paranormal mystery novels who, somewhat inconveniently, doesn't believe in the paranormal at all. She's back home with a bad case of writer's block, hoping the town's atmosphere will shake something loose. It hasn't.

Zelda is surrounded by Hidden Magic she refuses to acknowledge. Her family carries a long history of alleged witchcraft, her sisters seem to have powers in abundance, and yet Zelda remains firmly in the sceptic camp. That changes when Morgan Angelopoulos — the charming, frustratingly enthusiastic ghost-hunting podcast host next door — convinces her to join one of his late-night expeditions. What she discovers isn't a ghost. It's something stranger: bizarre creatures lurking in Moonville's woods that appear to everyone else as ordinary pets. Only Zelda can see them for what they are. Suddenly, the woman who wrote six books about magic without believing in it turns out to be the most magical person in the room.

The Enemies to Lovers dynamic between Zelda and Morgan is the engine of the book's considerable comedy. Their Witty Banter & Sharp Dialogue drives scene after scene, and the tension between a Grumpy-Sunshine Dynamic — her dry scepticism against his boundless, almost reckless enthusiasm for the uncanny — gives the romance plenty of friction before warmth. Underneath the laughs, though, there's a quieter thread about Exploration of Identity and Belonging, as Zelda is forced to reconsider who she is when the identity she built — the rational one, the non-witch — starts to crumble around her. That's a specific kind of disorientation Hogle renders with real wit and occasional tenderness.

Moonville itself is a character as much as a setting. The woods have personality. The local lore seeps into the prose. Dark Folklore sits just beneath the town's whimsical surface, lending even the funnier passages an edge of the genuinely strange. Hogle leans further into the magical and paranormal here than in the first book — this is a Romantasy that earns the fantasy half of that label, complete with a Hidden Supernatural World of creatures, a family with a Family Legacy of witchcraft, and a protagonist whose Found Confidence is inseparable from finally accepting what she can do. The Slow-burn Romance keeps the relationship building at a pace that rewards patience, and the Paranormal elements grow wilder and more inventive the deeper Zelda and Morgan venture into the woods.

Fans of Hogle's earlier work will find her signature voice — odd, warm, genuinely funny — fully intact. Newcomers can follow the story without having read the first book, though returning readers will get more from the Tempest family dynamics. If you're after a Small Town Romance with real magical teeth, a heroine who earns her transformation, and enough eccentric creature-lore to fill a grimoire, this is it.