Some places are built, while others are dreamed into existence. When we first began sculpting the Hazelnut Inn, my pointing trowel met more than concrete — it met the edges of stories.

We were designing boundaries: lines between a deep interior magic and the modern world scratching at the windowpanes. If you look closely at the North Star Suite’s celestial ceiling and secret-keeping corners, you will feel the distinct influence of the many fantasy worlds I’ve explored through the years.

I’ve always loved reading and I’m particularly fond of Naomi Novik’s work — her fierce, deeply empathetic characters have stayed with me long after the final page. If you are packing your bags for a stay under our stars, here are two of her books that I recommend for your nightstand.

The Perfect Match: A Deadly Education

Our North Star Suite is a sanctuary — a safe harbour with a private garden and a soothing soaker tub. The room’s midnight velvet tones and celestial motifs perfectly mirror the dark weight of Novik’s narrative. But real magic requires contrast; it needs a hint of peril to make the comfort feel earned.

That vital contrast comes alive in the pages of A Deadly Education. The novel introduces the Scholomance: a living, shifting school whose darkness is actively trying to eat its students. Reading it here creates a delicious friction. You can explore those dangerous, monster-filled corridors while safely tucked inside a suite built to shield you from the world. It’s the ultimate luxury: experiencing literary chaos inside a fairytale haven.

The Alternate Path: His Majesty’s Dragon

If dark academia isn’t the escape you're looking for, slide Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon into your satchel instead.

This story trades claustrophobic danger for historical grandeur and the thrill of the open skies. The suite’s deep ocean hues and sweeping celestial ceiling mirror the endless horizons of Captain Laurence and Temeraire’s journeys. Reading it here feels like charting a course across the stars from the comfort of your own private captain’s quarters.

Each of our suites is a personal invitation to step out of the ordinary and into a story of your own. We built the architecture; we welcome you to bring the ink.

There is a distinct magic reserved for the edges of the world. It belongs to wild, salt-sprayed horizons, the creak of polished timber under a restless sky, and the belief that the stars were put in place solely to guide you home.

If your partner is a romantic who keeps a treasure map tucked inside their daydreams, chart a course for the North Star Suite — a proposal destination that is equal parts grand expedition and intimate sanctuary.

Send a Message in a Bottle

Great love stories deserve to be written on parchment that crinkles under your fingers. Before you pack your bags, quietly secure your materials: a sheet of fine paper, a length of twine, and a vintage glass bottle.

Draft a handwritten letter detailing your shared voyage. Chart your major milestones — from the first week you navigated life together, to the exact moment you realized your compass always points back to them.

Roll the letter tightly, tie it with weathered twine, slip it inside the bottle, and pack it safely in your luggage.

Leave your creation on the suite’s antique coffee table for them to discover. Once your partner uncorks the bottle and reads your words, they will find a final guiding instruction at the bottom of the scroll: "To set your course, consult the stars.”

Navigate by Starlight

When your partner finishes reading, point to the celestial map painted on the ceiling above. Remind them that for thousands of years, sailors and dreamers have looked to the night sky to find their bearings.

Tell them that your heart has always steered you toward them — and that they are your true North Star.

In this quiet moment, ask them to sail with you forever, through stormy seas and over calm horizons.

A New Chapter Begins

This moment marks the end of your separate paths and the launch of your life together. The world outside may be unpredictable, but you are one another’s safe harbour and home port.

The Captain’s Keepsake

Take the message in the bottle home with you. Display it on your mantelpiece as a permanent reminder of the night your courses aligned forever.

Some foundations are laid in myth rather than mortar. If your heart beats to the rhythm of a distant tide, you will eventually find your way to the North Star.

There, the weathered hull of the Avellana pierces the stone tower like an salt-bitten thorn. The ship still vibrates with the pulse of Temperance Longbottom, a woman so resolute that sea parted to let her pass.

As a child, Temperance possessed a green thumb so potent that yarrow bloomed at the sound of her laughter. But the valley grew too small for a heart that beat in time with the tides. She traded her garden for the salt-sprayed deck of the Avellana, a vessel navigated by the scent of destiny rather than the stars. As Captain, she became a legend in the indigo mists — a woman who once routed a pirate fleet not with a cannonade, but with a gaze so steady it calmed the sea.

From those villains, she reclaimed wonders that defied reason: coins that sang in ancient tongues and limestone giants who wept the brine of forgotten oceans. Temperance could feel the thrumming magic within these relics, yet she could never wield it. Haunted by the beauty she could not wake, she spent her twilight years on a feverish odyssey to return every artifact to its rightful shore, chasing the mirage of Atlantis until the horizon finally claimed her.

Temperance vanished into the deep, but her ship refused to sink. Carried by a final, impossible wind, the Avellana took to the sky, sailing over mountains to embed itself forever into the walls of her childhood home.

If you feel your heart beating in time with a tide you cannot see, come to the North Star. The stone giants still sleep in the garden, dreaming of the deep, and the Avellana sits waiting for a new soul to take the wheel.