Darker young adult literature is all the rage now and authors keep rolling out these dark novels that so easily capture the audience’s attention. The Hazel Wood is one of these and it is very reminiscent of the original dark fairy tales that came from the Brothers Grimm.
The Hazel Wood is also Melissa Albert’s debut novel and she dips her toes into waters that many debut authors don’t dare to navigate.
The first few chapters of The Hazel Wood give us some background on our main character Alice, her mother Ella, and her grandmother, Althea Prosperine, who wrote a popular book of fairy tales. This book was called Tales From The Hinterland, which contained twelve fairy tales, which were very dark and different.
Alice remembers that she was kidnapped when she was six years old, by a man with red hair who said he was taking her to her grandmother. She was not harmed and was found very quickly by the police and her mother. A decade later, Alice spots the redheaded man who looks the same as before and strange things start happening.
She and her mother receive a letter that informs them that Althea has passed away and shortly afterwards, Ella disappears under very strange circumstances. This causes Alice to turn to a classmate named Ellery Finch who agrees to accompany on a journey to visit the Hazel Wood and find her mother.
The character of Alice wasn’t too likeable, but she was very compelling and I felt myself reacting to situations in a very similar way as she did. Alice is a very self-centered character and seems to focus on the fact that she grew up poor and never had somewhere that she could call home. Throughout the book she is a little bit demanding and never acknowledges her mistakes, which causes many of the other characters to have problems with her. Overall, she isn’t my favourite heroine in a YA novel.
The other main character, Ellery Finch was a much more likeable character. He comes from a family with money and he is a super fan of Althea’s work and wants nothing more than to visit The Hazel Wood, which is Althea’s vast estate in upstate New York. He forms a shaky bond with Alice and they set off on a journey to visit the Hazel Wood, which also happens to be the one place that Alice’s mother told her never to go. I thought he was funny and sweet and by the time I finished this book, I really missed this character.
Many YA books nowadays, contain some form of romance, but surprisingly this book doesn’t. The Hazel Wood is a book that doesn’t seem to have the time to introduce a romance as it is too busy trying to solve a mystery, and keep dark forces at bay. This was a really pleasant thing to see as romances often swallow up the whole plot.
Although it was a little slow-going and very, very dark, I ended up enjoying it. The whole concept of this book was very original and the plot was very intriguing. This book is certainly for an older teenage audience as it was disturbing, unsettling and had a lot of graphic violence/gory horror within the fairytales and novel itself. I was warned beforehand that it was very dark, but I didn’t feel truly uneasy until I started reading this alone. Plus the story was not wrapped up in a light sort of way, so if you are looking for a happy ending, you better turn around.
Have you read The Hazel Wood or are you planning to read it? Tell us in the comments!
SYNOPSIS | GOODREADS
Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: her mother is stolen away―by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother’s stories are set. Alice’s only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”
Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother’s tales began―and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.
