Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: her mother is stolen away―by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”
Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began―and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.
Published January 30, 2018 by Flatiron Books
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My ThoughtsI've never been one for fairytales, considering I haven't seen half of the childhood Disney movies that every person my age is supposed to have seen, so I didn't know what exactly to think of going into this one. The cover is honestly what got me since I'm a big person on the texture of fiction books.
But anyways, I was pleasantly surprised after starting this book. The Hazel Wood isn't a typical fairy tale gone wrong type of story. This is definitely darker, not heavy romance based, and overall an edgier take on fairytales. It's not the typical stories either. Instead, The Hazel Wood is filled with characters and stories like the Door that Wasn't There, Jenny and the Night Women, and Twice-Killed Katherine. This made it a lot easier for me to read, considering I didn't have to have a solid background of childhood fairytales in order to understand.
The main character, Alice, had a pretty interesting upbringing. She would wake up in the morning and her hair would be tied up in braids, with no clue as to how they got that way. She had a weird run-in with a man who tried to kidnap her, and her renowned grandmother was a famous author of The Tales of Hinterland which is so dark and creepy that no copies of it exist anymore. This background of Alice made her very easy to understand – her fears, her motives, everything was clear to me who Alice was and what she wanted.
Enter Finch, the boy who is obsessed with The Tales of the Hinterland and super wealthy. The friendship he has with Alice is just plain weird, and his character didn't make much sense to me either. There's no way he was that obsessed with the world to do what he does, so his motives were a little unclear to me. Also, there's one scene with him that made me uncomfortable when they were getting pulled over by the cops, but we won't get too much into that. Pretty much the author tried to bring up a very timely issue, which could have gone well, but instead, she had the main character shut it down.
The one part that made me mark this a three out of five is because of how fast it went towards the end. The author does her best to explain The Hazel Wood and the Halfway Wood, but not enough to understand where Alice is going and keeping up with her journey through. The second half of the book was such a whirlwind, that I kind of got lost a bunch of times. I wish that there would have been more leading up to entering the Hazel Wood, and that they would have saved all the mumble jumble of what happened in the woods until the end, but hey, I'm not the author or the editor.
My advice is to take caution when picking this up. There are redeeming qualities, but be wary.
Stars: 3 out of 5
What I Liked: Alice's background, the cover
What I Disliked: Racial remarks, confusing ending,
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