The Hazel Wood By: Melissa Albert

Greeting and salutations my fellow book lovers, I have another book review for you today on a book I read recently.

“She talked like a woman who knew more books than people.”  ~ Alice Crewe, The Hazel Wood

    The book follows seventeen year old Alice Crewe and her mother Ella Proserpine who have both been on the road for as long as Alice can remember to try and outrun the bad luck that tends to follow them around. Things seem to get better when Alice and her mother receive word that Alice's grandmother, Famous author Althea Proserpine, has died. However, Alice quickly realizes that they may not have completely outrun the bad luck when Alice comes home one day to find her mother Ella is missing. Now Alice is looking for answers to find out where her mother could be and it seems the only place to get the answers she's looking for is to go to her grandmother's estate, The Hazel Wood.

    So I hadn't heard anything about this book until it arrived in my February box of Owlcrate. Upon opening it I immediately fell in love with the cover. I love the green, gold, and silver look. (cover gets a 5/5 stars) After reading the description I couldn't wait to dive into this book and knew it had to be my next read. I did look up the book before reading it without trying to spoil myself too much and quickly learned that this book was pretty highly anticipated in the reader community and that it was actually the first in a series.

    Like I said, When I read the description of this book I thought it was going to be right up my alley and predicted that it would probably become one of my favorite books of 2018.  I have always been obsessed with fairytales whether they be the original, Grimm's Fairytales, Disney adaptations, Fractured Fairytales, retellings, etc. etc. I do especially love darker themed fairytales and the spookiness that comes with them and this book seemed to have it all, the premise sounded amazing and it definitely seemed to have that dark and spooky vibe to it. I picked it up almost immediately and dove in.

    When I first started the book it had me hooked almost instantly, I couldn't put it down and at first it seemed that my prediction of this becoming a favorite of mine would turn out to be true. As I got further into the book however I found myself picking up the book less and less and found it hard to find the motivation to read it. Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed it when I did read it but it didn't wow me as much as it did in the beginning. It wasn't until closer to the end of the book that I found myself really enjoying it again and finished it quickly. So I really loved the beginning and the end it was just the rest of the book that had me like "meh". 

    One thing I liked and that I found really interesting is Althea's book. The book is called Tales of the Hinterland and is a collection of fairytales all taking place in this world called the Hinterland. Althea's book is really well known and it's what made Althea famous; so naturally you would think that basically everyone and there mother has read it. That is actually not the case. Turns out not only has hardly anyone read it but it is really hard to find. It went out of print, and no one can seem to find a copy of it anywhere. Not even on eBay, amazon, or anywhere you'd normally find a used book. Only a very rare few people sometimes find a copy of the book in very odd places. What's stranger, is even the fandom seems to be sort of MIA. You can never find fan art, fanfic, nothing. I thought that was a really cool element that really had me wishing I could read Althea's book even more than I already wanted too. 

    I also really enjoyed our main characters in the story. Alice has such a cool backstory that you learn about as you read and while she can come off as kind of mean you learn why that is as the story goes on. After Alice learns that her mother is missing she teams up with this boy from her school named Ellery Finch. Ellery is actually one of the few people who have read Althea's book and is a huge fan. Ellery agrees to help Alice find the Hazel Wood and the two embark on this adventure together. 

    I really enjoyed the chemistry the two characters had with each other. It is sort of that stereotypical friendship where they aren't really friends at first (At least on Alice's part) and they become closer as the book goes on, but I loved the remarks they share back and forth with each other and the relationship I feel just flows. The two do seem to keep a lot of secrets from each other causing a lot of arguments and disagreements which I feel was a little off but overall I did enjoy reading about them both.

    I also really liked that we get to read snippets of the stories that are in Tales of the Hinterland throughout the book (and the way those pages were decorated). They were really dark kind of fairytales that never seem to end well for the characters of them and I definitely want a book that is just the stories in Althea's book. No lie, I kind of need it in my life A.S.A.P.

  Speaking of Tales of the Hinterland, I loved how the owlcrate edition of The Hazel Wood was made to look like the cover of Althea's book. It almost looks exactly like the description of Althea's cover. I just thought it added so much to the aesthetic of the book itself. 

    Overall, I give this book a 3.5/ 5 stars because I really did enjoy the book, especially the beginning and end, it just didn't wow me like I thought it would and didn't live up to my own personal hype in my opinion. I'm not sure at this time if I will continue on with the series when the sequel comes out since I wasn't as impressed with it as I had hoped and I already really liked how the first book ended and think it would be fine as a stand alone novel, especially cause everything was already wrapped up really nicely. If you are a fan of Dark and creepy fairytales, or the Grimm's Fairytales, I think you'll really enjoy this book and would recommend it.

 WARNING: Don't read past this point if you are planning to read The Hazel Wood and would not like any spoilers!

    So as far as the reveal that Alice is the same Alice from the story Alice Three-Times, I wasn't really all that surprised. However, I did like that Alice had to relive her story and find a way to change the ending of it in order for her to be free of her story for good and find a way back to the world she grew up in. Alice did have an advantage in the hope of changing the ending since she had never read Alice three-times and she knew nothing about being that Alice until later on in the book. However that isn't why she is able to change the ending right away since while she is reliving her story she doesn't even remember that she is supposed to be changing it or that she is even in a story at first. She thinks she is just going through with her life. When she does start to remember and they manage to try and change the ending I do think the author rushed it a little too much and it was too easy a thing for the characters to accomplish but overall it was a cool concept. 

    One thing that had my jaw dropped was Ellery's "death" before they reach the Hazel Wood. I loved Ellery's character and couldn't believe that he was gone. With every character that was introduced from the Halfway Wood to The Hinterland I was hoping that it would be Ellery and felt my heart sink when it wasn't. I was really happy when he finally did come back with Janet to help Alice break free of her story, even if it was a bit of a stretch for him to be alive  given his injury.

    I was really disappointed by the fact that Alice and Ellery didn't wind up together at the end. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Ellery is happy where he is and that he's doing something he loves and enjoys but I really shipped Alice and Ellery and wanted them together so badly. If it is one thing I hope to get from the sequel it's to see Ellery and Alice together. I am kinda curious as to who this other girl that Ellery mentioned is though. (I just want to talk to her I swear.)

  We also learn that Althea did not make up these fairy tails herself. That Althea wound up in this sort of other world where these stories play on a continuous loop and that she more or less wrote what was happening down like a reporter would and just published them into a book once she found a way back to her own world. Since she wasn't supposed to do that it made a kind of bridge between the two worlds which is part of the reason Alice and her mother were being followed by the "bad luck". I really liked that explanation as to why the fairy tails exist and made me imagine that that's how all fairy tail writers get the ideas for their stories. (though, I hope they aren't on some kind of continuous loop and they get to live their lives like a normal person.)

  Well, that's it from me today, let me know what you thought of The Hazel Wood and if you're planning on reading it if you haven't!

                    

                                                                                                         Sincerely,

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