Secrets worth keeping

While not technically romantasy, the Secrets of Ormdale, a five-book series by Tasmanian author Christina Baehr, has enough of both fantasy and romance to appeal to readers who would appreciate the genre without the objectionable content.

In Ormdale, a region in the far northern wilds of Yorkshire, dragons are very real but hidden—and protected—by several families tasked with caring for them since medieval times. It’s a challenging assignment, in part because their scaly charges are venomous. Figuring out how to live with them and keep them secret threads through all the other subplots in the series.

The Secrets of Ormdale, Book 1: Wormwood Abbey Christina Baehr

The story begins when Edith Worms, a clergyman’s daughter and the author of sensational mystery novels, finds herself traveling with her father, stepmother, and brother to Wormwood Abbey, the family seat, after the death of her uncle. Her father at first tries to break the entail, a staple of British inheritance law familiar to any Jane Austen fan, so that the estate can pass to his niece, Gwendolyn. Edith is all for disposing of the family property as soon as possible so she can get back to London and her writing career. But then, she starts to feel an uncanny connection to Ormdale and its inhabitants—especially the tall, dark, and handsome neighbor. The rest of the series follows Edith as she falls in love with both.

Baehr is a Christian, and faith resonates throughout these stories, although it’s not integral to the plot. The characters are believers who find themselves on a thrilling adventure. Edith and her father sometimes fall into high-brow theological discussions. She has more down-to-earth conversations about God with a Polish Jew who works on the estate and becomes Edith’s friend. He fled to England to escape Russian persecution and has many questions about how a good and kind God could allow such suffering.

Baehr describes the books, set just before the turn of the 20th century, as cozy gothic. She drew inspiration from two of her favorite novels, Jane Eyre and Northanger Abbey, and told me she aimed to write a gothic story as the 19th-century children’s author Edith Nesbit might have written it.

Baehr is a homeschooling mother of 10 and says she didn’t write the books with any age group in mind. But because they don’t contain any violence or sexual content, they are suitable for teens or even mature middle grade readers. The characters do make sinful choices with consequences that might be a bit much for younger readers. While this series is complete, Baehr is working on a spinoff that promises to be just as fun, the first of which is due out later this year.