I had been waiting to read this book for over a year. I love fantasy, and I love books that feel like re-tellings, but aren’t? If you get what I mean… The Hazel Wood sounded so intriguing with its magical world, and from the synopsis, it kind of gave me a similar feeling to The Raven Boys – a whimsical world just a stretch away from ours. So because of that, and because of my love for The Raven Boys, I was so so so excited…

Alice has spent most of her life on the road, always one step ahead of the strange bad luck biting at her heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her isolate estate – the Hazel Wood – Alice discovers how bad her luck can really get.

Her own mother is stolen away – by a figure who claims to come from the supernatural world where the fairy tales are set. Alice’s only clue is the message left behind:

STAY AWAY FROM
THE HAZEL WOOD.

To rescue her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother’s tales began.

As aforementioned, I really wanted to enjoy this book, but unfortunately, it ended up being a very average book. The writing itself was magical, I truly love the way that Melissa Albert writes, and she had such an amazing idea when it came to The Hazel Wood. I just don’t think that she executed it as well as she could have done. The plot was a bit of a mess, to be honest. The first half was everything that I could have wished for, and the way I wanted the rest of the book to be written. However, the second half of the book didn’t live up to my expectations. It was just a mess.

The second half of the book just felt like a massive info dump of sorts. Too much happened in such a short space of time and I couldn’t wrap my head around everything, and it just got to the point where it was getting confusing. Once I had gotten past the halfway point, I was ready for the book to be over. Which isn’t good at all.

“Everyone is supposed to be a combination of nature and nurture, their true selves shaped by years of friends and fights and parents and dreams and things you did too young and things you overheard that you shouldn’t have and secrets you kept or couldn’t and regrets and victories and quiet prides, all the packed-together detritus that becomes what you call your life.”

― Melissa Albert, The Hazel Wood

When it comes to the characters, they’re not my favourites either. Alice is just mean, even when she has no reason to be. I mean sure, I love a sarky, badass female main character, but Alice wasn’t any of those things… She was just mean. And then when it came to Ellery Finch who is a rich boy, who is not like all the other rich boys in his class because *gasps* HE READS! I just couldn’t connect to either of the two characters and I just didn’t care about them. There’s also the point that Alice has such a toxic relationship with her Mom, but I hope that this will get smoothed out in the next book. Yes, there’s going to be a second book, and yes, I will be reading it.

I think, and this is just what I’ve heard through the grapevine, but I think Melissa Albert is also writing the Tales of the Hinterland book. BUT DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT!

Overall, this book just didn’t do it for me. I LOVED the first half, but the first half and the second half just felt like completely different books. Melissa Albert had a great idea here but unfortunately executed it in a poor way.

Disclaimer: this book was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review