The Hazel Wood

Caution: This post may contain spoilers for anyone who has not read nor finished The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

My first book finished in March was The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert which was the February book in my OwlCrate. The original plan was to participate in the official OwlCrate Book Club on Facebook but I found myself too invested in the story and completed the book in three days. To be fair, I didn't know what to expect from this book considering the very mixed reviews of it I'd seen on Good Reads and Booktube but I ended up really enjoying it. I ended up giving it a 4/5 stars on Good Reads.

The Hazel Wood is a modern day fantasy story about a girl named Alice who has lived on the road with her mother, traveling constantly as bad luck seems to follow them. Then Alice's grandmother, Althea, dies on her estate, The Hazel Wood, and believing their bad luck is over, Alice and her mother settle down in New York. As it turns out their bad luck is just beginning. Alice's mother is kidnapped by people claiming to be from the Hinterland, the setting of Alice's grandmother's book of macabre fairy tales called Tales from the Hinterland, and the only clue is her mother's message to 'Stay Away from the Hazel Wood'. After this Alice teams up with a boy from her school, Finch, and they head North to the Hazel Wood in search of her mother, pursued by the dark characters from Althea's book.

So the book had action straight from the beginning, with tales of Alice's life on the road with her mother including the Alice's kidnapping by a man connected to her grandmother as a child. It moves through her grandmother's death in the Hazel Wood and Alice's mother's marriage in New York. After seeing the same man who kidnapped her as a child, unchanged, in the coffee shop where she works Alice's mother, stepfather, and stepsister all disappear for a day and then her stepfather and stepsister reappear without her mother that night revealing they had been taken by someone from the Hinterland and then released. The Hinterland is the magical land of dark fairy tales written by Alice's reclusive grandmother, Althea, a woman Alice never met and a book she has never read. Alice teams up with a somewhat friend, Ellery Finch, who happens to be a Hinterlands superfan and has committed most of the stories to memory. AS they head off in pursuit of her mother towards the Hazel Wood, the two begin to encounter the characters from Althea's book. When they finally near the Hazel Wood, it becomes known that Finch has betrayed Alice, selling her out to the Hinterland characters following them in order to experience the land and stories he loves so much. Unwilling to sacrifice her own life, the Hinterlanders kill Finch and transport her to an in between woods where she uses the gifts left by the man who'd kidnapped her in her coffee shop to safely transverse the woods and enter the Hinterland. It is there, talking to the spinner of stories who controls the stories of the Hinterland, that she realizes that she is a character from one of the Hinterland stories. The story spinner sends her back into the story and she has to shatter her story to escape. With the help of one of the princes from her story, the redheaded man who kidnapped her as a child and then reappeared to her as a teenager, and Finch himself (who is NOT dead), Alice manages to destroy her story and escape. Since the story is no longer being told she is allowed to leave the Hinterland and return to the real world where two years have passed but her mother is waiting for her.

I really rather loved the dark fairy tale nature of the story, as well as the snippets of the Hinterland stories told in it. The twist that she was the character from the story was a little predictable but still fun as she battled her way out of it. I related with Alice, because of her fairy tale story she is a very angry young woman. She is skeptical and distrusting of everyone and their motives for doing things. On the road books were her constant companions, her only companions except for her mother. On the other hand she kind of treated everyone other than her mother like crap, including Finch who not only helped her on her trip but also bankrolled it. Admittedly, I cared a lot less about how she treated Finch after it was revealed he had sold her out to the Hinterland and was basically being paid to deliver her there. I'm very excited for the next books planned for the series, which includes an actual short story collection version of Tales from the Hinterland. I turned around and immediately loaned by copy of the book to someone else to read I enjoyed it so much.

All in all, The Hazel Wood was a quick, fun, dark fairy tale read and I recommend it to anyone interested in modern fairy tales.

Emma and I give it a 4/5 stars.

Happy Reading!
Richelle and Emma :D