A wonderfully enchanting sequel that I could not put down. Melissa is a fab writer and I look forward to reading more by her.

I hadn’t realised just how much The Hazel Wood had stayed with me until I picked up The Night Country and was instantly sucked back in. All the sinister feelings The Hazel Wood had generated came flooding back before anything had even happened. The Stories that resided in the Hinterland were terrifying enough when they stayed where the belonged, but to discover that the very worst of the ex-Stories had followed Alice back to the human realm was a truly horrifying thought.

I enjoyed the “whodunit” element to Alice’s story – this is something that you don’t often see in YA fantasy, and it added an unusual twist. It was Finch’s story that I truly loved in this book though. The telling of it had an almost fairy tale style to it, and even as the Hinterland unravelled around him, it retained a certain innocence that wasn’t present in Alice’s dark and twisty life. The mirrored styles of each of their stories enhanced each other and balanced the book beautifully. Everything around Finch’s adventures, from using books as doors to other worlds, to the way he communicates with Alice was just filled with wonder.

As the story built towards its climax, my heart was in my throat as I couldn’t see any way there was going to be the happy ending I longed for. Did I get my happily ever after, or did they all die in the end? You’ll just have to read it to find out.

The Night Country really is a satisfying sequel to a book that made my Top Ten of books I read in 2019, and I have a suspicion that it could be making its own appearance in this years Top Ten.

I wanted to love this so much!!! I devoured the first one and couldn't wait to see what was coming next, but in the end I found the storyline slow and lacking in that sinister glamour that made the first book so addictive. Generally speaking its still a very good book, Melissa is a wonderfully descriptive writer and there are amazing moments (usually including Sophia). However, part of me wonders if perhaps the Hazel wood was better as a stand alone, or if perhaps a prequel would have been more satisfying. The removal from dark fantasy adventure to a combination of fantasy, murder mystery and romance-ish left me mildly disappointed. Part of what made the first book so wonderful was the real world blending with the Hinterland but it failed to have the same appeal in this installment.

As sharp, as beautiful, as poisonously enchanting as the first book. There are stories, and there are Stories. There are refugees from endless glittering enchanting tales trying to live ordinary lives. How can a girl who once fell in love with death deal with day to day humdrum? How can a sharp-toothed predator live on coffee and take-out, and not dream of ruby red blood.
I had thought that Hazel Wood and contained everything that I needed in a story. The princess is saved, and reunited with her beloved mother. The trapped are set free from an eternity. A boy full of wishes gets to travel the realms of magic....
I didn’t realise how much I needed to know what happened after the ever after.

Albert’s writing reminds me of the kinds of cocktails that you buy in hipster bars, sweet, Shaft, dreamily coloured, with floating flowers, and the kind of bite that creeps up on you.

I have been waiting for so long to read this book!!! The Night Country was at the top of my list of books I absolutely have to read in 2020 and I devoured in two days (wish my job didn’t take away so much of my reading time). My expectations were really high and they were amply exceeded.

In The Hazel Wood, Alice left the Hinterland with the truth about her origins and followed by a bunch of the characters that inhabited her grandmother’s fairy tales. Now, Alice is still struggling with the truth and she is trying to find her place into the world. When someone starts killing her fellow characters, or ex-Stories, Alice needs to find out the truth before her world is destroyed. In the meantime, Ellery Finch remained in the Hinterland in search of adventure, but now he is looking for a way back to his world and his girl…

“The Hinterland was a clock, perfectly weighted and balanced and spinning in time.”

It’s so exciting to be back to the magic and menacing world created by Melissa Albert. You can’t read this as a stand-alone. It is mandatory to read The Hazel Wood, not only to better understand The Night Country, but also because it’s an addictive story. If you’ve read The Hazel Wood, you know the plot is dark and suspenseful and it is much more so in The Night Country. Alice and her mother Ella are back and their relationship is still far from easy, Ellery is finding his way back to his world, and we meet new characters and read new suspenseful and thrilling storylines.

Melissa Albert is a fantastic author and her stories are magical, thrilling, and original. Highly recommended!!!

Let me just preface this by saying that I had some real issues with the formatting of this ARC. Some words were missing completely and for some unimaginable reason the letter 'fl' were also missing from the story which meant that whenever a word like "flying" came around, I had to reread the entire sentence just to make sense of what it actually meant and what was missing which definitely made me hate this book at certain points because it kept pulling me out of the story.

Despite that, I think that this was a nice sequel to The Hazel Wood. I wasn't too big a fan of the protagonist or the pacing in the first book and I certainly faced the same issues in this book but at least the focus on the darker and grittier aspects of the fairy tales kept me engaged throughout the story. Unfortunately, I don't think I'd read another book of this author because the pacing just never meshes well with me and I can't stand any of the characters - which, true, is the point to an extent but also makes me not root for any of them and rather root for the end of the book instead.

I couldn't read this. I was travelling and then I was sick for a while, so by the time I was well enough to pick this up to read I found that the formatting on my kindle cut off half of the words, and the title had been archived so I couldn't download the ADE version.

I received a free ecopy of this book in return for an honest review. Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for the opportunity.

Although I have read and reread The Hazel Wood, I was caught off guard by the arrival of this sequel. The Hazel Wood had seemed quite a self-contained book, that didn’t particularly need a follow up. However I was delighted to find myself presented with a part two, to the story of Alice Proserpine and Ellery Finch.

As The Hazel Wood ended Alice had returned to her mother, Ella, in the real world while Ellery had remained in the Hinterland and we heard that he had met someone new. When we pick up the story in The Night Country, Alice is graduating high school. She has stopped attending the support group for ex-stories and is trying to be human. A series of murders bring her back to her roots. Alice feels she is being framed for the murders and her reactions show that she hasn’t left her storybook violence as far behind as she thought. Messages start appearing from Ellery and eventually we get to find out what happened to him after Alice left.

The Night Country is a bit of a murder mystery which is a little different from The Hazel Wood’s exploration of the violent origins of fairytales. We get to see what happens when story characters break free but find themselves adrift without the tether of their story, and also what happens to a story-land without the stories that give it substance. There is a bit of a twist to the mystery before the end too.

I love the way Melissa Albert handles language. The words have a smooth and sinuous feel that are a joy to read. “Her voice was a drug. Dense as fog, rubbing its back against your ears like a cat.” It may not be every reader’s cup of tea but for me, it is writing I feel I can just sink into.

Sadly the story just didn’t draw me in as much as the first book so I read it in fits and starts. I felt that was very likely due to the absence of Ellery Finch early on. Once he reappeared I dug in much more firmly. Alice Three Times is an interesting character but not very likeable. Finch is a sympathetic character with a gentle romantic nature. I loved seeing what happened to him and getting a glimpse of the other worlds. If there are future stories in the offing that involve following Ellery through those other worlds I will be a very happy reader.

This book is just a beautifully written and captivating as its predecessor.
The characters were in my opinion a lot more well developed than they were in the first one, and i also enjoyed the plot a lot more too.
This universe is super unique and interesting and i'm very pleased i picked up this series

Deliciously dark and beautifully written, this plays with traditional fairy tale tropes in an imaginative & intoxicating way. It's an exceptionally good sequel which will delight fans of the first but series knowledge is essential.

No need to beat around the bush. Long story short – I loved and adored this book!

I was lucky enough to pick up an advanced copy of The Hazel Wood when it was released in 2018. Despite the mixed reviews that the debut novel received, I loved the gorgeous dark fairytale atmosphere that Albert introduced us to.

And now we have the sequel and it is so deliciously atmospheric – above and beyond the first book in the series!

This gorgeous fantasy looks at the aftermath of Alice, and the other Stories, after they leave the Hinterland and are adjusting to life in the world as we know it. But of course, this isn’t simple.

And to add to the difficulty of being a fairytale character without a story to follow, both Stories and the Hinterland are dying.



“What are we now, but the lost children of a dead world?”



This sequel dives deep into the dark and gritty worldbuilding with a gorgeous eerie atmosphere. The atmosphere was the key thing to drag me into the series and the sequel has not disappointed on that count.

The worldbuilding becomes more of a focus in The Night Country, extending beyond the Hinterland, but to other worlds as well. I adore the way this was weaved into the plot itself and ties into everything that is happening to the Hinterland.

We also learn more about the Stories. Something that I have been craving since finishing The Hazel Wood was a compendium of the Hinterland stories themselves. And while we aren’t quite there yet, this book sheds a little more light on the Stories who make up the Hinterland – what their fairytales are and who they are when they don’t have a fairytale to follow. There is something captivating about discovering characters independent of their stories.

Even if you weren’t entirely convinced by the first Hazel Wood book – I recommend you pick this one up. It stole my dark-fantasy loving heart 🖤 And with a novella and compendium of the Hinterland stories on the horizon, I will be screaming about these gems for a while!

I enjoyed this, but sadly I found it seemed to be missing a certain something that The Hazel Wood had, it seemed to have lost its spark, it’s magic, I think the first was so dark, gothic with the help of the stories twisted in with the tale and because the dark, gothic creepy stories are absent in this book, I think it makes a huge difference, maybe it’s just me. Don’t get me wrong I still really enjoyed this, I just wanted to explain why it’s not 5 stars which I think it would have been if these were reintroduced. The characters as always were well written and relatable, with further development in this book and some really interesting new characters introduced too. The writing is just as beautiful as the first, the plot good and strong (although gets a bit lost in the middle). It’s a really good continuation of the first book and if you’ve read The Hazel Wood, you’ll enjoy this.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

The lure of [book: The Hazel Wood] was the dark, creepy, gothic fairytales entwined with the story. They were largely absent from The Night Country and the result is the tale is missing its magic, innovation and imagination. Those fairytales are the glue for this series. Without them, the story is all over the place. The writing is wistful. It meanders and struggles, unsure of how to move the plot along. Sometimes it is an adventure quest and other times a murder mystery, all wrapped up in an angsty YA coming of age story.

The Night Country fairytale was excellent though. Very dark, twisted and grim. Setting my expectations for [book: Tales from the Hinterland] to high.

Recommended: one for the fans. If you didn't enjoy The Hazel Wood, this won't convert you.

Taking a Turn into the Beguiling Night Country

Many of you probably know how much I loved the Hazel Wood (and if you didn’t, here’s your daily reminder 😉) which is why I was nervously excited to read its sequel. Fortunately, while the first worked well as a standalone, there was much to appreciate about this second instalment.

Re-entering Alice’s world, the subtle opening worked its magic on me. Slowly it built up the mystery, hiding more stories within stories, and expanding into new territory. More than ever, Albert demonstrated that this isn’t just inspired by fairy tales, giving us that gothic touch that I admired so much in the original.

Best of all, the characters were still raw and real. The new characters were welcome additions, but I had felt there was room for growth for the two main leads- and that’s what we got here. I especially liked where the story took Ellery Finch. And I felt Alice, with some of her sharp edges blunted, felt more relatable to me here. In many ways, she was just a girl, out of place, trying to find her way, giving this a stronger coming of age element.

As with her debut, Albert’s writing talent shined through. There were so many stunning sentences and beautifully balanced images. Images that blew me away at times. And many, many ingenious references.

Now, despite masterful craft employed here, I have to admit that large parts of this weren’t as compelling as the first. Much of the structure felt meandering and formless. Personally, I felt it could have benefited from a tighter plot. I found I fell out the story somewhere in the middle…

…though luckily I was captured again by the end. Because when this book had me, it had me. Keeping me up well into the dark hours of the night, I found I was hooked by the mind-blowing and meta finale. All the threads that had spun out in the narrative drew together in a satisfying conclusion. Without delving into spoilers, I can safely say it delivered something special. Sure, it wasn’t perfect- but for all its flaws I was still left one satisfied monkey:

Rating: 4/5 bananas

So, if you’re already a fan of the Hazel Wood, I think this is worth your time. And if you haven’t read the first one yet- then what are you waiting for?! Go ahead and read it!

I'm sorry I cannot read this copy of the book. Many words had gaps with letters missing and I am not always able to guess what the word is supposed to be.

I have very mixed feelings about “The Night Country”.
On one hand, the writing was just as beautiful as it was in “The Hazel Wood”. But it also felt somewhat distant, so I felt disconnected from the characters and story throughout the whole book.
My copy also had a lot of typos, so I hope that has been fixed in the final copy...
I think I’d give it about 3.5 stars, but might reconsider the rating.

This series, is right up my alley, fantasy YA, leading female characters. And this book, The Night Country, is a fantastic sequel to the Hazel Wood. A story where other stories collide, and people meet new places, and hover around like nobody has ever seen before.
This is one of those rare occurrences where a sequel ends up surpassing the original for laughability and originality.

I think in this novel, Melissa Albert well and truly understood where her story and characters were heading, and had developed them enough to be at least likable in any sense of the word.

If you like characters which will surprise, and turn, then this second novel is for you.

If you like fairy tales with a twist, which are not afraid to spill a bit of blood on the ground, then this novel will (probably) be for you.

Alice Three Times, Ellery Finch, and the many other stories found within these pages have certainly got a ride for you!

Special shoutout to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for an ARC, and allowing honest reviews to be made! Get this from your local bookstore from the 7th January!

I requested this book thinking I would love The Hazel Wood so I would definitely want to read this one... I was wrong. I HATED The Hazel Wood.

Below is my review of The Hazel Wood, I doubt my review of The Night Country would be any better so I'm just not going to waste my time reading it.

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Hmmm... I should've just DNFed this book. I bought this book on an impulse during a sale, because the cover was so pretty. I'm never cover-buying again 😂

Writing style: Absolute crap is putting it lightly. Gosh, it was so bad. Too much info at some points, and way too few details at another. No proper world-building, you're thrown into a story and it's a confusing whirlwind that's never properly explained.

Characters: Everyone was so freaking flat. There was no character growth, no reasons why people were acting a certain way... Everyone was so very disappointing.

Story: What a joke. I'm sure in the author's head this was a great story, but it really wasn't any good on the page. This book had no real plot twist, no point where we were working towards, no grand quest. It was just a confusing mess of words.

If I hadn't been approved for The Night Country (The Hazelwood #2) on Netgalley I might have postponed reading this book. I'm glad I got it out of the way. I'm not gonna read The Night Country, I can't put myself through more of this horrible writing and flat characters. The Hazelwood gets 1 star from me. What a waste of time.
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I really enjoyed The Hazel Wood, and was excited to see this follow up. Whilst I still enjoyed the premise of fairy tale characters living in our world, I admit that I did find this novel hard to follow at times. Perhaps it had been too long since I read the first one. It may have made more sense if I had re-read The Hazel Wood before reading this. This is not to say this is not a good read though.

I had mixed feelings about reading The Night Country, given my disappointment with The Hazel Wood, but I wanted to give it a try because there was a lot that I enjoyed in the first book. While I enjoy Melissa Albert’s writing, reading The Night Country gave me deja vu: I mostly enjoyed the first half and it fell apart in the second half.

Just like The Hazel Wood, I really feel like I should have loved this story but it just didn’t work for me. There are a couple of issues I had with the book, but the main one is the fact that The Night Country feels like two completely separate stories smashed together into one book.The first half of the book is told solely from Alice’s perspective, then about 45% in it starts to switch on and off between her and Fitch. This honestly was so sloppily done that it just didn’t make any sense. I also feel like this book could have been seriously edited down -- while I like Albert’s writing style she uses a lot of words to say very little.

I’ll always love her depictions of New York and the way she blends fairy tale with the real world, particularly the way she describes the Hinterland refugees surviving in our world, however I think that at this point I just have to chalk this up to me not enjoying her books.