Although change unsettles Calisa and she initially resists and resents it, she eventually discovers that change can spur beneficial growth. The book shows progress taking shape when characters release old plans and adjust to the unpredictable turns that reshape their days. Calisa’s move from a miserable breakup to the role of magical heir to a multi-realm inn illustrates this arc. The juxtaposition of her path with Auntie Zee’s highlights how clinging to a fading situation blocks any chance at renewal.

Calisa enters the novel just after her plans collapse. Her breakup with Ethan shatters her summer, leaving her unmoored and without the boyfriend, job, or companionship she imagined filling her summer with. She reaches Vermont mourning the future she pictured: “[It] would have been a very, very different summer than this” (6). This ruined plan, however, pushes her toward the life waiting at the inn. She’s initially dismayed by the changes in the inn, as well. Its crumbling state erases her idea of a charming escape yet offers her a tangible problem to fix. Her choice to stay and work signals a turning point. Instead of sitting inside her loss, she engages with the flawed place in front of her. That choice opens the path that shapes her growth.

Calisa is also initially resistant to the change in worldview caused by her supernatural experiences at the inn. After she sees her first portal in the broom closet, she tells herself that she must have imagined it. She accepts Jack’s illogical explanation of how the teapot works because accepting that it’s magical is too much of a break with her past understanding of the world. Eventually, however, Calisa realizes that she must change her worldview and accept the magical nature of the inn and its inhabitants. True to form, once she gets over her initial resistance, she finds that she’s excited and curious and ready to eagerly embrace her new world.

Auntie Zee, in contrast, shows how continued resistance to change wears a person down. She’s angry about aging, her weakening strength, and the inn’s decline. Her refusal to adjust or accept help leaves the building on the edge of collapse. She covers the furniture with sheets and allows the grounds to be overtaken with weeds rather than acknowledge that she needs help with the cleaning and gardening. Her inability to face her limits links directly to her weakening magic. Exhaustion eventually traps her in her cat form, showing how her fight to do everything by herself nearly destroys her life’s work.

Calisa’s story moves in the opposite direction because she adjusts to surprises. She comes to accept that “[e]verything changes, and it’s okay” because each change opens the door to new possibilities (318). Her final steps toward adulthood take shape when she blends her two worlds. A portal opens in her Brooklyn bathroom, letting her move between her old home and the inn. This combined life shows that she no longer sees change as an erasure of what she had before. Instead, it becomes an opening that enlarges her world and gives her a broader sense of who she can be.