The Night Country (The Hazel Wood)

Plunged back into the world of The Hazel Wood, it was a real experience to follow Alice once she’s been saved from her story.
The characters who’ve escaped from the Hinterland are all marked in some way, and they can see when they look at each other some of these marks. It could, theoretically, be possible for these ex-stories to live on earth peacefully. Unfortunately, someone has other ideas.
In the opening chapter Alice talks about their changed circumstances when she refers to them being prey rather than predators. Their vulnerability is evident, and when ex-Hinterlanders start appearing with body parts missing it is evident that someone is trying to recreate their own story.
Alongside this focus on Alice and just who/what she is, we also get to see Finch travelling through worlds to try and salvage his own story.
The stories are interleaved and I was left guessing exactly how they’d link until quite late on. My sympathy for Alice definitely grew as the book progressed and I loved the ending.
Though I’ve pre-ordered my copy - and can’t wait to read it again - I’m grateful to the publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

The night country, sequel of The hazel wood, is a perfect ending for this captivating, wonderful and thrilling story. It's a mix of fantasy, thriller, murder investigation, dark fairy tales and it's absolutely enthralling.
It starts a year after the events of the first book. Alice is free from her own story, away from the Hinterland, helped by Ellery Finch and saved by her own stubborness; at the end of the first book she found herself on Earth, after being disappeared two years. At the beginning of The night country, Alice is trying to live a normal life. She wants to live like an ordinary girl, studying, getting a diploma, working, living with Ella, her mother. But her escape from the Hinterland prompted other Stories to do the same and the Hinterland is dying, without its stories.
Alice is divided between two worlds in this book. Hinterlanders live in the city, people from Earth who choose to live in the Hinterland and came back, all of them meet regularly to try to adjust to their new life. But the presence of Dafne, an agitator, an ex Story, forced Alice to choose between her two worlds. And she chooses her mother's.
A series of Hinterlanders murders, killed with ice, pushed the others to suspect Alice and mysterious letters from a person she thought she lost forever turned her life upside down another time.
This book has two POVs, Alice's and Ellery's and they narrated the story from two different timelines and worlds. Alice, on Earth, investigates the murders, trying to unsmear her own name.
Ellery Finch was in the Hinterland and saw the world dying, his decision of breaking free Alice having created an avalanche of Stories running away. When a mysterious traveler, Iolanthe, offered him a way out and the choice to travel through other worlds, he accepted.
The Night Country story, told separately by Ella to Alice and Iolanthe to Ellery is from a children's picture book, a real story and world that connected Alice and Ellery, during the book.
During all the book Alice's and Ellery's stories run on different tracks, parallel ones, connecting each other only through magical letters and coincidences, bewteen worlds and times. Like The Hazel wood, The Night country contains fairy tales, creepy ones, like Ilsa's story, Alice's best friend called Sophia on Earth and like The night country, stories full of blood and sacrifices and, like the first book, Alice found herself in a world where there's no difference between fantasy and reality. And the stories, and Stories, have teeth.
It's an wonderfully complex book, like a peculiar mosaic, where things are seen from two point of views until you can get the whole image. It's formed by tracks, parallel ones, worlds, deaths, blood and stories. It's the ideal conclusion for this story.
Both the main characters are grown, are changed. Alice is more adult, more aware of the world around her and the Hinterland and, as before, she's driven by her love for Ella, choosing to be away to protect her. Her relationship with Finch is a peculiar one and more present this time. Ellery's letters find her and from different times and worlds they miss each other, they want to get back and give each other another chance, to have more time to be together.
Ellery's need and want to travel prompted him to live in the Hinterland, to trust a stranger, to find a library full of doors for another world, to become something else, risking everything to save his own world.
I love how everything connected, how the ending wasn't a sad or an happy one, but an hopeful ending/beginning.
Amazing, brilliant. This book is another ode to stories, reading and traveling. Like Alice's and Ellery's journey, it is almost a push to search, to discover, a celebration of fantasy, imagination and love.


“I want to hold your hand. I wonder if I'd be brave enough to say this to your face.”
[...]I want to write to you again, but what I want even more is to watch your face when you look up from a book one day and see mine. One day soon. I'm gonna be so shy when I see you again. It's just, by now, I've said as much to you in letters than I did in life. Be patient with me, okay? When I see you and my tongue tangles up. Be patient. I'll see you after the Night Country.”


“Stay. Stay where you are. Let me find you.” […] I want to find you. I want to walk between worlds with you. I wouldn't mess it up this time, I wouldn't hide inside my own head. I wouldn't let you hide inside yours.”


We’re something formidable now. I’m an ex- Story, the girl who got away. He’s a Spin-ner who survived the rise and fall of his world. We’re both survivors, the two of us. We’re wanderers. We could make a home in any world.

The Night Country is the perfect conclusion of The hazel wood saga and this world, these worlds, will stay with me with their characters for a long time.

I was utterly beguiled by the dark, unpredictable tangles of The Hazel Wood and so was eager to see what the sequel brought us and although The Night Country isn't quite as dazzlingly original as The Hazel Wood (and as a sequel it would be difficult to be) it didn't disappoint, continuing Alice and Ellery's stories whilst introducing the spinner's own tale.

Two years after the events of The Hazel Wood, Alice is back in New York, graduating High School living with her mother, whilst Ellery has stayed behind in the Hinterland. New York is full of Hinterlanders, unable to return home even if they wish to, cut adrift from their tales and able to make their own fates. But not all want to, or are able to, too wild and feral for New York and human kind. Alice has chosen not to associate with them, aware they disapprove of her attempts to pass as human, until news of gruesome hinterland deaths reach her, along with the sensation she's being watched. Terrified of bringing evil to her mother's life again Alice flees, only to find herself under suspicion from her fellow stories.

Meanwhile Ellery has been a tourist in the Hinterland until he gets a chance to do what he's always dreamed of, travel through other worlds. But his actions in the Hinterland have consequences, consequences that are spilling through into New York.

The Night Country is as dark and deep as the Hazel Wood, highly descriptive (sometimes a little over so) and mesmerising. I've seen a lot of negativity over Alice's character, but I love the fact that she's true to herself and her story and I don't believe protagonists have to always be likeable anyway! I hope this isn't our last visit to the Hazel Wood. If you liked The Hazel Wood, you are going to enjoy The Night Country.