Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. I enjoyed it from the start, it took a bit of reading before I got into the story. It seemed to just from one thing to another. Great storyline and great characters. They all worked well together. Definitely worth a read.

This book was on my radar for some time as a much anticipated release in 2018 and I actively stalked it for ARC opportunities. So when it appeared on NetGalley and my request was approved, I gave an audible squeal of excitement. I am not a squealing type of person so that should give you an indication of my high expectations.

And, for the first 3/4 of the book, I was absolutely engrossed. The story was dark perfection, a wonderful blend of mystery, creepiness and whimsy. I stayed up until 2am one night, captivated and more than a little creeped out. The pacing felt a little bit uneven but overall premise hooked me. There is no denying that Michelle Roberts can turn a powerful phrase. I felt like we were being given glimpses of something amazing behind the curtain- and the limited recounting of the stories from the book within the book- Tales from the Hinterlands- were riveting. 

Unfortunately, like many other reviewers, it felt like the wheels came off quite badly toward the end of the story, The protagonist. Alice, was not the easiest character and at times was down right off putting. However for a big chunk of the book the more grating aspects were balanced by what I felt was an engaging partnership with her companion Ellery Finch, as the pair fall further down the rabbit hole on their way to the Hazel Wood and try to decipher the mystery of their increasingly weird experiences. When the focus shifted toward Alice on her own and her adventures in the Hazel Wood, I felt like the plot became muddled and messy. The last 100 pages or so was like watching a beautifully cast sweater come unraveled- it was very hard to make sense of what was going on-and what was going seemed by turns boring or bizarre. On the whole, I felt like it didn't quite live up to its potential and I came away far more intrigued by the elusive volume of fairy tales that I didn't get to read than the story was I was being told. 

I am still giving the book 3.75 stars since having mulled my review for a few days I still find myself thinking about the book- which is always a sign that it's made an impression on me, even if it was a very uneven reading experience.  I'll be interested to see how the book does on general release and it's definitely the sort of novel that I would recommend to people, if only to see what they thought of it. And if Michelle Roberts ever decides to write the full Hinterland tales, I'd love to read more- especially about Twice Killed Katherine and her bird cage.

Alice and her mother seem to have outrun the bad luck that follows them wherever they go – until Alice’s mother gets kidnapped, by someone who looks like they’re a character from one of her grandmother’s stories. She realises that the curse that follows her family stretches far beyond just them, but to anything to do with the book her grandmother wrote: Tales of the Hinterland. With the help of rich classmate Ellery Finch, Alice goes after her, venturing into her grandmother’s dangerous and haunted estate, and the Hinterland beyond.

Why did I want to read? I always love a good fairytale.

I don’t often read YA fairy tales that are dark in the way that a Grimms brothers’ fairy tale is dark. Books that have come close are The Book of Lost Things and The Language of Thorns, but I have to admit that I think The Hazel Wood has most successfully caught the creepy, unsettling, and uncaring atmosphere, to the point where I felt pretty certain that what I was reading was about to turn into a horror novel at any moment.

TW: Suicide. I don’t discuss it in my review, but there is one chapter in The Hazel Wood at a high point of tension that could be triggering.


Wonderfully creepy atmosphere
One of the things that made this book impossible to put down was simply the amount of suspense and mystery surrounding Alice, her mother and grandmother, the Hinterland, and just the unsettling way the story is told. Like most great thrillers, I spent most of my reading time physically uneasy…worried that either something was going to go wrong, or someone was going to die – and this made the book impossible to put down.

Alice is a paranoid character, and is used to things going wrong, to the point where she expects them to. That, coupled with the wonderfully creepy and incredibly original aesthetic of the Hinterland fairy tales and the seeming curse surrounding her grandmother’s book, makes The Hazel Wood intensely unsettling. Part of this is the setting: the Hinterland is a fairy tale kingdom, but not a good one – more one where people get murdered in cold blood, or sold off carelessly, or abandoned by the people they love most. You only actually get to ‘read’ two of the fairy tales from Althea’s book Tales of the Hinterland, but these, coupled with the other characters you meet – Twice-killed Kate, the Briar King – mean that you are always aware of the Hinterland existing as some kind of nightmare realm at the very edge of the story. And then, of course, Alice and Finch try to basically just plunge right into the heart of it.

Alice doesn’t actually enter the Hinterland until about 65% into the book. But, much like the Wood in Uprooted, the knowledge of this Hinterland threat lurking at the edges of the story is what drives the entire plot forward. Every sentence and event in the book is tinged with the same paranoia. There are a lot of plot twists that emphasise the feeling that nothing is sacred or safe, and that the Hinterland will always find a way to taint it.

This is a YA fairy tale, but the creepy nature of the fairy tale world actually turns it into more of a thriller. I don’t even like thrillers, but I loved how gripping The Hazel Wood was.

 

Characters that went in interesting directions
Another thing I thought was interesting is the way the two main characters, Alice and Finch, were treated. Alice is a girl who doesn’t trust easily, and who has always moved around, and never made friends. There were points when I hated her – one moment when she complained about being too small and pretty is a particularly stellar example – but in the end I always found myself routing for her no matter how selfish she could be. I think the particular reason is that her entire motivation revolves around finding her mother, and while there was some teased UST with Finch, there was no point when her mother wasn’t the most important person in her life.

Finch, too, started off made up of the kind of tropes I tend to dislike – a privileged rich boy, Gansey-esque kind of character. He loves Tales of the Hinterland, and gets swept up into the adventure without really thinking about the consequences, because his position allows him to do that. But Melissa Albert seems to know which kind of character she’s writing – in particular, I think the Gansey-hero-complex elements – and she works to twist this into something new and unexpected.

As this is a spoiler-free review, I can’t go into details, but…neither of these characters, or their relationship, go where you’re expecting them to go. I spent the first half hating both of them for being cliches, and the second half watching these cliches getting torn to shreds. It was a pretty cool experience, I guarantee this book will give you more than you’re expecting from both of them.

Also, the ending. The ending of this book is unlike any other YA fantasy I’ve read in a long time. It’s simple, sweet, and a little mundane, and to be honest made the book for me.

 

The Hazel Wood is a scary, gripping thriller with an angry protagonist on a quest into fairy land – if you like any of those things, I think you’ll love it. It’s well-written, and original. My only reason for marking it down slightly is that I wish there had been more time in the Hinterland, or at least exploring the other tales in more detail – and that’s mostly because I loved the glimpses we get of it so much!!

Overall Rating: 4/5

The Hazel Wood is completely captivating. Sometimes you start a book and it can take a good 20% of the book to start to get into the story and the characters, but that definitely isn't the case here. 
The thing is, I should have been bored at the beginning. There was a lot of information being dumped onto us, setting the scene and giving us a backstory for Alice and her mother, Ella...but I was completely riveted. Melissa's writing is truly incredible. There was not a single point of this book where I was bored, and this isn't an action packed and fast paced book.
Alice is our narrator; she's seventeen years old and has spent her entire childhood moving - <I>running</I> - to different places, never settling in one place for a large amount of time. 
Alice's grandmother is the renowned writer of a book of fairy tales in world called the Hinterland. Alice has never met her famous grandmother, or been allowed to read her work, but has always fantasised about her coming to whisk Alice away to her exclusive estate, the Hazel Wood. But when one day Alice comes home from school to find her mother missing and a passage from one of her grandmother's stories lying in her bed, Alice teams up with a fan of her grandmother's, Finch, in the search for her mother. 
The Hazel Wood is less of a Disney fairy tale, and more of a Grimm fairy tale; it's <I>dark</I>. And Alice isn't an easy character to love; she's dark and cynical and has a lot of anger issues. At the beginning of the book, I was sure that I wasn't going to like her, but she definitely grew on me. Because while she is dark and cynical and angry, she's also devoted to her mother; and when she loses her, she's lost. Her mother is Alice's anchor, the only thing she can rely on when they're running around the country. She's definitely no Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but I loved her all the same, and the ending was at the same time perfect for Alice and heartbreaking.
Finch is...I liked him, I did. He didn't blow my socks off, mainly because I spent the majority of the book being deeply mistrustful of him, but I did like him.
I'm so pleased I was able to read this book, I totally loved it. It won't be for everyone; it's dark and whimsical and there were times where I was second guessing everything and everyone, but I loved it all. 
*thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the chance to read this book*

THE HAZEL WOOD follows the story of two teenagers, both desperately trying to fight their way into fairyland—a magical place whose inhabitants are literally the stuff of nightmares. But while the concept sounds positively chilling, Melissa Albert fails to deliver. Too many of the scenes in this book are stretched out for no reason; Alice and Finch just keep bickering with each other (in a misguided attempt at sexual tension??) & driving around the woods without any real gameplan. Even the beautiful prose couldn’t make up for the lackluster plot & I quickly found myself skimming through the book just so I could finish it.

I was absolutely blown away by The Hazel Wood from the first chapter to the last. One of those books that you genuinely don't want to end - I read it once for pleasure and I'm going to read it again to learn from it. Evocative and enchanting prose alongside an engrossing storyline made this one of my top five books this year.

Thank you to Netgalley, Melissa Albert and the publisher for my ARC of The Hazel Wood. 
Alice Crewe or Proserpine is the granddaughter of the infamous Althea Proserpine, author of the mysterious and rather hard to get hold of Book Tales of the Hinterland. But Alice has never met her grandmother, her mother keeps them away from her estate; The Hazel Wood and seen as though bad things and bad luck seem to follow them everywhere, Alice has no choice but to spend her life moving from place to place and pining for the answers she's sure her grandmother and her Book hold. 

This book is perfect for lovers of dark stories and particularly dark fairy stories, Tales of death and darkness, horror, murder and the creepy things which hover just of sight. When Alice's mother Ella goes missing, she must journey to The Hazel Wood and the Hinterland to try and rescue not only Ella but herself. 

This story was unusual but brilliant, a real page turner which keeps the reader engrossed right until the end. What hold does the Hinterland have over Alice, why is her new found schoolfriend Fitch happy to help her? Is he just a crazy fan of the Tales too or is there something more sinister going on? If you want to know the answers then you'll have to read the book!!

Deliciously spooky, dark, funny and captivating. One of the most unu books I read this year.

Often surreal, spellbinding. Perfect for lovers of fairy stories but be prepared to be amazed.

I didn't request this, so not sure how I was approved,. I don't read childrens literature or have children who would, sorry! 
The one star is only because I can't get it off my shelf without submitting comments here  and I can't very well give it more if I haven't even sent it to my Kindle :(

Okay, so this was not a book for me. I really wish I hadn’t received an arc of The Hazel Wood and had instead waited for more reviews to roll in first.

The blurb makes it sound exactly like the kind of dark fairy tale goodness I love, but if someone had - more accurately - explained that this is a book about a girl called Alice who gets sent to the Hinterland where she meets many colourful characters who talk in riddles, and she finds herself doing bizarre and random things like singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Landslide” in a Tudor-style pub… well, I’d have passed. I’ve already read Alice in Wonderland. Once was enough.

I know this will be much more suited to a specific type of reader who likes dreamy, nonsensical prose, heavy on the metaphors. Perhaps those who enjoyed books like Caraval. Those who are more forgiving of no one saying what they actually mean and talking all mysterious for no other reason than “shh, this is the rule of fairytales” because we all know it's more magical if nothing makes sense. For me, it was honestly irritating to have characters withhold important information just ‘cause.

The book opens with a bit of background about Alice, her mother Ella, and her reclusive grandmother Althea Proserpine - an author of a dark fairy tale collection, Tales from the Hinterland, that gained a cult following some years back. Alice has never met her grandmother, but Ella has constantly insisted on the two of them packing up and moving again and again, running away from bad luck that clearly has something to do with her grandmother and the book she wrote.

When Ella disappears, seemingly kidnapped, Alice teams up with long-time Althea fan, Ellery Finch, and uses his knowledge of the stories to find her grandmother's secret estate - The Hazel Wood.

This first half(ish) seemed very slow and longer than necessary. It is mostly a road trip where the characters rely on fairy tale logic along the lines of if it wants you to find it, you will instead of smarts and deduction to keep the story moving. A romance develops but, to the author's credit, she never allows this to become a romantic book overall.

I found a lot of the story really hard to get through. Maybe because I struggled to form a connection with any character. Alice herself is cold and bitchy, without the depth and complexity needed to make these traits interesting. Ellery Finch is super hipster and must gaze at the moon and quote Shakespeare every few pages in order to keep functioning. He has a tattoo of a Vonnegut quote, of course. And the problem is these two are the only really valuable or memorable characters in the book.

The second half basically is Alice in Wonderland. Which may or may not sound appealing, but my tolerance level for random weirdness isn't that high.

My favourite parts were the Tales from the Hinterland fairy tales within the story, which were deliciously dark and creepy, but I disliked it every time we came back to "reality" with Alice and Finch. I kinda wish the author had written a book of short stories instead and let me skip out on everything else. I could definitely see myself enjoying a creepy short story collection from Albert.

So, yeah, definitely not for me, but I would recommend this for those who like Wonderland retellings, and those who enjoy really lyrical prose over characters and/or plot.