This book is a perfect mix of modern world and dark fairy tales that have somehow gone missing form our busy lives. If you look at the history of fairy tales most of them started out full of death and darkness and shadows and over time became the nice, good-wins-against-evil type that we know and love today.

The Hazel Wood goes back to those shadowy roots. Alice thinks she’s just a normal girl, growing up with bad luck following her and her mum Ella around. But when her mum gets kidnapped and a page from her estranged grandmother’s book of fairy tales is left behind as a message to Alice; things go from bad to worse pretty quickly.

Armed with the only nearly-friend she has, they set out on a dangerous road to find the Hazel Wood as Alice believes that’s where her mother was taken. But on this journey her whole world is turned up-side-down and Alice finds herself right in the middle of one those tales that her mother has tried so hard to keep from her.

It’s a fabulous, exciting book, with hints of magic and good old-fashioned Grimm-like tales.

Thank you very much to the author and NetGalley.

Loved this book, warmed to the characters and the pace was perfect. Can’t wait for the sequel.

"We were each our own island, gathered together into one messed-up archipelago"

The Hazel Wood follows the dark, twisted fairytale of Alice as she goes on the search for her kidnapped mother. Brought up in the shadow of her grandmother Althea, Alice and her mother have run from their past for as long as Alice remembers. Haunted by the tales of the Hinterland, a fairytale book Althea wrote, Alice's mother flew from the home she grew up in to save her daughter from same the fate, only to be followed by bad luck where-ever they ended up.

So when Alice's only family gets taken by the Hinterland, she decides she's going to hunt down the Hazel Wood, the famous home of her grandmother, and what ensues is an adventure through sinister fairytales unlike the happy-go-lucky Disney ones we all know and love today.



This book was one I'd heard so many mixed things about. I'd seen good reviews, bad reviews, reviews that lay somewhere in-between, and I found myself falling into the latter group as the book drew to a close.

The story of Alice is one I found myself pulled into. The writing was almost captivating, the stories within hauntingly beautiful, and with each chapter, I was drawn in even further. However, I wasn't in love with the story. Much of the plot felt inconsequential somehow, like it was only there to fill space. The overall plot was fantastic, but the bits in-between, the filler sections, felt a little useless.

In the beginning we are given a bit of backstory, tales of travels on the road, background information about Alice and Ella as they ran from their past. Catch up to modern day and things have settled down. But this means life has become mundane and slightly boring. I have to admit, I preferred the backstory to the modern day, Alice's memories of the past adventures on the road are something I really enjoyed reading about, but when we see her all grown up, working at a coffee shop, living an everyday life, it felt like the spark had gone. It returns later on, when Alice first enters the woods and sets off to find out how to get her mother back, but to lose the spark so early on, I felt like the story wasn't really going anywhere.

I still loved the story, the writing was brilliant for a debut novel, and I raced through this book in a matter of days, but the lack in plot for a third of the book meant it was difficult to convince myself that this book could be a higher rating. It's main saving grace were the stories dotted throughout. The tales of each individual character were one of the best things about this book, with the minor breaks to tell these tales taking center stage. Alice three times took center stage the most, with that story being incredibly relevant, but I wish we'd had the opportunity to read the other tales mentioned, and seriously hope that these will be explored further by Albert.

When it came to characters, Alice was the clear standout, along with her mother Ella. Alice and Ella were both strong individuals who took charge in their own respective sections. Of course, with Alice being the protagonist, her strength was unparalleled, and her character development was done brilliantly. She starts out as an angry child, difficult to withhold her temper, and with the guidance of Ella, she manages to get this under control. All her life she's been running from something, forbidden from reading stories written by her grandmother, chased by bad luck, and falling into the same traps again and again. Her actions were justifiable, her love for her mother unquestionable, and the more we learned about her, the more Alice grew on me.

Ella wasn't as prominent, but in flashbacks and modern day scenes we get the sense that she is a strong woman, independent, and trying to do what's best for her daughter. You understand why she hates her upbringing, and why she tries so hard to make sure the same things don't influence Alice's life.

The only character I wasn't sure of was Finch. He didn't feel like he was important to the story in any way. He was a fanboy, obsessed with the Hinterland, and he seemed like the little lost puppy who secretly loves Alice, and ultimately turns out to be a plot twist. His story arc was predictable and the plot twist really didn't come as a surprise. He effectively felt like a means by which to get Alice from point A to point B, not as a character with a backstory. Unlike Alice and her mother, Finch could be compared to a rich cardboard cutout, with virtually no personality, and no real point.

And that upset me, because I felt like he deserved more. Finch was a fanboy, much like a lot of us, and he could have been a heck of a lot better than he turned out. I think if he had his own story, I'd like him more, but right now, I wasn't so sure.



Overall, I did like this story, if only for the tales and the writing. For a debut, Albert has done a fantastic job, and I can't wait to see what she writes next.

And if you're still not sure, think Grimms Fairytales meets modern day. This dark, twisted story perfectly intertwines with modern day to make a fast paced, adventurous story that will make you wish you had the book of tales in your hand so you could devour it in one sitting.

When it comes to fantasy novels, I love books that have one foot in reality and one in the fantasy realm; Harry Potter; Narnia; The Magicians trilogy. The sort of books that make you feel, quite possibly, that they could come true. So The Hazel Wood scores top marks on this front.

The world of Alice and her mother Ella is firmly rooted in modern-day America. Yet all's not quite right. Bad luck follows them like a bad smell and, throughout Ella's childhood, they've shifted from place to place, trying to outrun some unseen force that blights their lives. And this is where we find 17 year old Alice once again. But, this time, her mother has disappeared - into the potentially mysterious world of her childhood - the Hazel Wood - where she grew up with her mother (Althea Proserpine) who was famous (among certain circles) for writing just one book, Tales from the Hinterland. This book, full of dark fairytales, is one that Ella has protected Alice from - and copies are rare to the point where they're almost impossible to find. However, once Ella goes missing, Alice knows that she needs to unearth the mystery behind her mother's odd childhood. She's helped along the way by Ellery - a boy who's obsessed with the book (he once owned a copy, but it was stolen; yet he remembers the stories and is able to relay some to Alice).

I'd have liked to have heard more of the stories (the titles alone are intriguing - and I really hope Melissa Albert has plans to bring out a companion book full of these tales!) I did feel, slightly, that once Alice entered the world of the Hinterland, some of the magic and intrigue was lost slightly. The world of Fillory (Lev Grossman's creation from The Magicians certainly had more charm and magic to it - it felt more rounded, like a properly-realised place). The Hinterland itself felt a little vague and not quite as engaging as I might have hoped for. However, as a whole, this novel was incredibly well written and very engaging. And I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what this author comes up with next.

This book has joined the favourites list, if not, it has become the favourite. I loved this book so, so much. It was dark, mysterious and eerie. Three things that I adore in books. I loved this book so much that I managed to read it in only two days and I am already re-reading it. 

This story is beautifully created and is a dark fairy tale. The story follows Alice as she's looking for her mum as mysterious things keep happening and she ends up having to go to The Hazel Wood; her grandmothers estate.

"Stay away from the Hazel Wood"

I can't even pinpoint the exact reason I love this book so much and I thinks that's because I loved everything about it. The storyline was gripping right from the first page (so much that I couldn't put it down) and the characters I couldn't help but fall in love with. It was emotional and left me heartbroken while wanting more, more, more. 

Thankfully, I just found out that there is going to be two more Hazel Wood books. One being a sequel I believe and the other being an anthology of short stories from the Hinterland. I also believe the film rights have been sold which I hope they do make but I also pray that they don't ruin this fantastic novel.

The characters in this book were a work of art. At first I didn't like many of them but then grew to love them all, especially Finch. I haven't read about a character like Finch in so long and finally, now I have.

Overall, this book is a masterpiece. It's deliciously dark but also magical. I can't help but want to enter this world no matter the terrors that it holds. I recommend this book to everyone. I will continue re-reading this book for years to come and I truly cannot wait to receive more of this story.

At first this story involves Alice – who is seventeen, lives with her mother, step-father and step-sister, and goes to school and works weekends in a coffee shop. She and her mother spent many years moving around before this marriage: bad luck had dogged them all Alice’s life. Her earliest memories are of leaving – midnight flits, long car journeys and being made to feel unwelcome in a series of spare rooms and sofas. At first I thought this would be a novel about a feisty teen learning how to take her place in the more affluent, privileged world she finds herself in but then, well, it all started to go a lot darker. The cover suggests that we may be about to enter the world of crime fiction or psychological thrillers but no – this is the world of magic, the supernatural and of fairy-tales.

Alice’s grandmother wrote a bestselling book of dark fairy tales set in a world called The Hinterland. But Alice has never met Althea Proserpine, her grandmother, the book is impossible to find (no matter how much money you offer) and after news of her death Alice’s mother vanishes in mysterious circumstances. Although she has spent her whole life being told never to go near The Hazel Wood, Althea’s home, she heads there with Ellery Finch, a school friend and Hinterland superfan. And this is the point where the Hinterland drags Alice in: the point where she discovers the truth about her identity and fights to escape her destiny.

I’ve seen a few reviews for this book (after I’ve written this far in mine) which are quite negative. They find Alice to be an unlikable character, full of anger and privilege, and they don’t like the fact that, although the book is a YA fantasy it is in a very real and contemporary setting for much of the book. They have issues, in particular, with how Alice relates to Ellery Finch – who is mixed race – and feel she considers her early life of poverty and drifting to be worse than the attitude he faces as a person of colour. I’m not denying any of these things occur but, without giving away any major plot twists, they are there on purpose. To paraphrase Jessica Rabbit, she’s not bad. She’s just written that way…

The book is well written and the author has a great way of describing characters and the surroundings. I liked how the author merged the real world with the fantasy world.
Although a little slow to start, once they actually reach the Hazel Wood, things pick up with the story.
Alice’s grandmother wrote a book of dark fairy tales and became a recluse with a cult following before dying on her estate (the Hazel Wood). Alice never met her though.
Alice's mother is taken in a string of incidents and it becomes clear that the Hinterland (the world from the fairy tale book) is real.
This is an enjoyable book but did lack that special something for me.
Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Books for giving me the opportunity to read this book.

Genuinely unique, contemporary, compelling and beautifully written, this is an addictive YA title and an exciting new voice in YA fiction. I loved the way it started in a very real setting, getting weirder and darker, before taking the reader to a strange and twisted fairy tale land. I would absolutely read more from this author.

I looooved this book, it was so enjoyable. All the characters were so interesting and well written, the plot was so imaginative and intricate. Alice was a fascinating lead, equal parts unlikable and endearing. It was fast paced and takes the reader on a dark journey - no Disney princesses here! I really enjoyed the dialogue and the many pop culture references made throughout. I can see the movie rights of this being snapped up pretty quickly so if you want to be ahead of the crowd, pick this up ASAP! It’ll be the next big YA flick, I’m sure of it!

Oh my word, what an amazing read! Brilliantly written and had me hooked right from the start.

I received a free ebook version of this one from Netgalley. Thankyou to both the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the chance to read this! My review is still fully honest.

I'd like to start this review by saying that this book isn't what most people seem to expect. It's far less whimsical and more modern urban fantasy than what people seem to be looking for, and it seems to be a big reason for a lot of low ratings I've seen. I don't personally think this is fair. This wasn't at all a bad book for me for what the book really is, and that's how I think people should be looking at it. I would just urge people not to go into this with strong expectations.
Alice lives in the modern day world and is always on the run with her mother from what she calls 'bad luck'. As the granddaughter of a cult author who wrote a book of dark fairytales, she has many odd and fantastical encounters as she grows up. When her mother is taken by her past, Alice has to travel to the Hazel Wood, the fairytale estate of her grandmother's, to find her, and learns a lot about who she is on the journey.
I found this book to be a very strong, solid debut novel. I can see Melissa Albert becoming a staple YA author very quickly! She has a beautiful, metaphorical writing style, vaguely reminiscent to me of Laini Taylor, that always works so well in YA fantasy. The chapters with Althea's fairy tales were some of my favourites, and I'm very excited to see that Albert is releasing a novella with all of the tales! This book was very immersive, fluent, engaging and entertaining, and I didn't get bored at any point. The magical, fairytale elements were sufficiently weird and wonderful to captivate me, and there are some real surprising plot twists in this book that I personally never saw coming. This is a world that could expand so much, and I am very interested in the sequel, although I definitely think that Alice's role in this is done. This book wraps up like a standalone, and these characters are concluded (except for Finch) but the world itself could go a lot further. I liked how the real life elements mixed with the magical, it feels like something that could happen in our own daily lives, and that's what made this book so fairytale like.
My only issue with this book was with the characterisation. I felt emotionally distant from these characters and the things that happened to them. I wasn't upset by a death that happened in this, I didn't feel attached to Ella at all and so it was hard for me to really understand Alice's motivations in going to the Hazel Wood, and overall none of the characters will remain with me. Luckily, I am more of a plot driven reader, and while I think this could definitely be improved upon, it didn't affect the story massively, at least for me.
Overall: a strong YA debut that I can see becoming very popular. 4 stars.

My thanks to Random House and Netgalley for an opportunity to offer my free unbiased review of what may well become a classic in the genre.I say that but, it is a marmite story so, if you like the way its written - like me, you'll revel in it if you want straight story telling and fully fledged characterisation of the background characters it'll taste yuk. To thoroughly enjoy it I'd advise letting the author have free reign of your time and mind. Don't rush it let it grow on you. Don't be worried about it creeping into your mind during the day when you least expect it. I think it will grow on readers and I also think it is one of those stories that - given the target readership, will become very big once it's gone through its cult phase. Well done melissa Albert you have just gained another fan, five stars.

This really is a book after my own heart. This is a fairy tale for the world weary, a fantasy for realists and children’s book suitable for any adult. Angry Teen Alice and her Mother are on a never ending quest to outrun their bad luck and the legacy of being the family of the infamous author of an extremely rare but near mythic tome of Fairy Tales. Soon the characters begin to cross boundaries into our world and we into theirs and that’s just the start.

This is a tremendously well crafted dark fairy tale, I thoroughly enjoyed this macabre story. There is plenty for readers to get their teeth into, creepy kids, shadowy figures in the periphery of consciousness , Grandmothers, Kings Queens and Princes both Royal and commoner both.

It reminds me of a darker modern amalgam of the Neverending Story and the InkHeart books but there is enough freshness and dark vivacity to the narrative that you are swept along with Alice as she embarks on the journey of her life, quite literally.

This was a very original tale, with a strange but enjoyable plot, creepy in places even.
The Hazel Wood is about a mother and daughter on the run from what they call the ‘Bad Luck’ which turns out to actually be something much more sinister.
Obsessed with fairytales, Alice comes to find that there are scarier versions of the much loved stories out there, to do with a place named The Hinterland.
Solidly written with a decent twist towards the end, The Hazel Wood was enjoyable, the pace although slow at times, kept me interested and I’d like to see what this author writes next.

“Look until the leaves turn red, sew the worlds up with thread. If your journey's left undone, fear the rising of the sun.”

Honestly, this is a difficult book for me to review. I've seen this popping up here and there on Goodreads and I added it to my mental to read queue almost immediately. So, I feel like perhaps I went into this with too high expectations, and that ended as it usually does, with disappointment.

My main issue with this book was the lead character Alice. She was so spiky, rude and self-centered that is made her difficult to emphasise with, or even to become fully absorbed into her story. I'm not always immediately against a difficult character, I think when they are skillfully written you can still form an emotional connection to them. In some ways, flaws can make a character more rounded and easier to relate to. I didn't find this with Alice, because her mean spirit would just peak at random moments with little provocation. This just led me unable to connect with her, and confused at her reactions often.

I particularly found her treatment of Finch uncomfortable, the constant reminders of how ugly and annoying she found him was jarring to me, particularly as he was so instrumental in helping Alice to reach her goal. I found her lack of gratitude, or even ability to treat him as an equal human being was difficult to swallow.

That being said, there were moments of this book I really enjoyed. The snippets of Tales From the Hinterlands were beautifully written, as every bit as magical and dark as the original Grimm fairytales. I also loved the descriptive prose Melissa Albert used to paint scenery, she made it incredibly easy for me to imagine her magical forests and the weird and often vicious characters that inhabit them.

In reflection I feel the book would have scored much higher for me, possibly even 5 stars , had Alice not read so self-absorbed, rude and unlikeable.

It actually makes me sad to only give this book 3 stars, as I feel Melissa Albert's beautiful writing style deserves more than that, but the unevenness of Alice means I can't score it any higher sadly.

The Hazel Wood has taken me in and it won't let go. This is the creepy, beautiful, dark and twisty fairytale book I have been waiting for my whole life. It's The Magicians but with a badass female protagonist. It's Harry Potter but Hermione is taking on an alternate universe where Voldemort wrote the Tales of Beedle the Bard. I am leaving this book desperate to start again from the beginning, but scared to reopen it in case the magic leaks out into my world. Read this book before the Hazel Wood reclaims it.

The Hazel Wood, for me, definitely felt like a book of two halves. During the first 50-60% of this book I felt constantly on the edge of my seat. Everything was balanced on a knife point, I had no idea what was coming next. I'm usually really good at anticipating where a book is going to go and while reading this I had honestly no clue what might be around the next corner. I couldn't even see where the next corner was!

We then reach just over the halfway point and the story suddenly has a very different feel to it. There's a change in pace, in storytelling. (It reminded me heavily of Daughter Of Smoke And Bone by Laini Taylor. If you've read that book, you'll know what I'm talking about!)

I definitely felt myself gripped by the fast pace of the first half and I think that's why the second half waned for me. The story was still interesting, but it felt like it was dragging it's heels a lot. This continued until the end of the book, where I really felt we could have ended sooner and felt more satisfied, but I believe the author wanted to ensure she had rounded everything off and instead, it just felt like too much information.

Anyone who enjoy 'dark' fairytales would probably get a kick from this book. Something I really liked about it was that when Alice first hears one of the stories from Tales From The Hinterland, she comments that it didn't read like a normal fairytale. Classic fairytales were based on morals and rules and Althea's tales didn't, they were bleak, dark stories that didn't make you feel good, or like you'd learned something. They left you feeling unsettled and really, I think that's what really comes across as we learn more about the Hinterland and the Half Way Wood.

The real testament to Melissa Albert's writing is in the characters, more then the plot. I spent a vast majority of the book second guessing all of them, trying to figure out if they had ulterior motives, who was loyal to who, if any of them could be trusted. It was exhausting and really put me, as a reader, in Alice's shoes.

Let's take a look at our characters:

Alice
Alice is our flawed heroine. I know from reading other reviews that a lot of people took a dislike to Alice, stating that she was mean, harsh, a bully to friends and those around her. I agree, she is all of those things, but I think the book does a very clear job of explaining why she is that way. When you look at her past, her upbringing, where she has come from, I think it's only fitting that she is the way she is.

Alice has this rage inside of her, she describes it like having ice in her heart. This obviously makes her quite an unlikable character to begin with, but what really made her appeal to me, was just how much she cared for Ella. Alice was willing to go the ends of the earth for her, would do whatever it took to protect her. The bond these two share was probably my favourite element of the book and the thing that ultimately redeems Alice, in my opinion.

Ella
Ella was my favourite character in the story, which is why it's such a shame that we don't get to see more of her! We see her a lot at the beginning and then hear about her through Alice and others. Her story arc and the things we learn and discover about her are brilliant, she was such a vivid character! One of my favourite moments in the book is when Alice recalls being a teenager and getting clipped by a car when on her bike. While she is left sitting on the road with bleeding knees and hands, Ella grabs her bike and runs after the car screaming. Alice recounts the she was: "glad Ella knew I'd rather have retribution then comfort". This moment did a lot for spelling out Alice's character, but it also gave us a huge insight into Ella.

Althea
Althea is a character wrapped in mystery for most of the story. This is because Alice knows hardly anything about her for a great duration of the book. She, like the reader, learns about her through scraps of information given by other characters and not everything she's told is decidedly accurate.

I found her character very intriguing. Alice is obsessed and somewhat in awe of her, yet while reading the book I found myself constantly suspicious and scared of her, suspecting that she wouldn't turn out to be a trustworthy character. The first meeting between her and Alice was a haunting scene and one that stuck with me long after I finished the book.

Finch
Ellery Finch was a character I was not expecting. One of the cult-followers of Althea's work, Alice is very aware when they begin this journey together that he is a fan and often questions his motives for being with her. It was a question that was running through my head too! Rich, slightly nerdy, goodhearted boy, with a love of The Hinterland, you have to wonder if he likes Alice for Alice, or if he's just interested in Althea's Granddaughter. I was rooting for him the whole time, convincing myself he was genuine, although this book is so wonderfully written that I couldn't stop a niggling voice in my head questioning "but is he really?"

I would recommend this book to fans of Holly Black and Lee Carroll. A dark fairytale that invades our world and won't let go.

Thank you to NetGalley for sending me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

Until Althea Proserpine (born Anna Parks) died all alone on the grand estate she’d named the Hazel Wood, my mother and I had spent our lives as bad luck guests. We moved at least twice a year and sometimes more, but the bad luck always found us.
When we traveled I kept an eagle eye on the cars behind us, like bad luck could take human form and trail you in a minivan. But bad luck was sneakier than that. You couldn’t outsmart it, you could only move along when it had you in its sights.
After Althea died, we stopped moving. Ella surprised me with a key to a place in Brooklyn, and we moved in with our pitiful store of stuff. The weeks ticked by, then the months. I remained vigilant, but our suitcases stayed under the bed. The light in our apartment was all the colors of metal— blinding platinum in the morning, gold in the afternoon, bronze from streetlights at night. I could watch the light roll and change over our walls for hours. It was mine.
Her voice was hard and certain. “No more bad luck for us, Alice. You hear me? It’s done.” So I went to public school. I hung Christmas lights around the plaster mantel behind our bed, and took a job at a café that turned into a bar when the sun went down. Ella started talking about things she’d never talked about before: painting our walls, buying a new sofa. College applications.
It was that last one that got us into trouble— Ella’s dream of a normal life for me, one with a future. Because if you’ve spent your whole life running, how do you learn to stand still? How do you figure out the right way to turn your straw house into brick?

Wow, I have been hearing so much about this book. From the first glimpse of the front cover and the snippet of a summary I saw, I knew that this book would be for me.
Dark fairytales?
Sign me up!
Alice is a relatable and not-entirely-likeable protagonist and we follow her attempts to get to the bottom of the weird things that have always happened around her. She and her mother have spent years fleeing the 'bad luck' and darkness that seems to dog their steps. When the grandmother Alice has never known dies on her hidden estate, The Hazel Wood, Alice's mother seems to think they can finally stop running...but things aren't so simple!
I really enjoyed all the references to various fairy tales and folklore throughout the book, as well as the insertions of sections of the stories published by Alice's grandmother after her adventures. Apart from this, the book was entirely different to what I was expecting. A lot of it takes place in our world, and despite strangeness leaking through into the real world we don't get to see the real magic in the Hinterlands until quite late.
At times this book was quite slow and I was impatient to get to the Hazel Wood. The build-up to this is done really well, then I felt like the last section was really rushed.
Dark and fascinating, but not a new favourite for me I'm afraid. Another book that promises magic, but doesn't have nearly enough of it until the end!

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.
But every time we left a place, I felt the things that happened there being wiped clean, till all that was left was Ella, our fights and our talks and our winding roads. I wrote down dates and places in the corners of my books, and lost them along the way. Maybe it was my mother whispering in my ear. The bad luck won’t follow us to the next place. You don’t have to remember it this way. Or maybe it was the clean break of it, the way we never looked back.
But I didn’t think so. I think it was just me. My mind was an old cassette tape that kept being recorded over. Only wavering ghost notes from the old music came through. I wondered, sometimes, what the original recording would sound like— what the source code of me might look like. I worried it was darker than I wanted it to be. I worried it didn’t exist at all. I was like a balloon tied to Ella’s wrist: If I didn’t have her to tell me who I was, remind me why it mattered, I might float away.


What I liked: The dark fairytales - I would have loved to read the book written by Alice's grandmother. The relationship between Alice and her mother. The genuine creepiness of the books going missing and the build-up to travelling to the Hazel Wood.

Even better if: I wish that the time in the Hazel Wood was longer. It was amazing, but felt like there was a lot in 'the real world' first and I really wanted to get into the world Althea recorded in her stories... Alice was quite unlikeable at times, particularly in how she treats Finch and dismisses him even when he's trying to help her. Found her fond feelings towards her kidnapper quite odd too.

How you could use it in your classroom: I wouldn't recommend this for a primary classroom, but would recommend this to older readers in secondary school, particularly if they have previously enjoyed some of the dark fairy tales by Holly Black or Melissa Marr. (Do be aware that there is swearing though!) I did like Alice's relationship with her mother and it could easily be used to start a discussion about home, family and belonging.

The Hazel Wood is a fairy tale with a twist, wholly original and definitely unputdownable.

The Hazel Wood begins with a Vanity Fair article from 1987 on reclusive author Althea Proserpine. The author states that Althea is raising her daughter on fairy tales. An intriguing first line.



“I ask if I can come talk to her in person, and her laugh is hot whiskey on ice. ‘You’d get lost on the way to finding me,’ she says. ‘You’d need breadcrumbs, or a spool of thread.’

The protagonist of The Hazel Wood is 17-year-old Alice Proserpine, granddaughter of Althea.

“My mother was raised on fairy tales, but I was raised on highways.”

Alice and her mother, Ella, moved about so much when Alice was younger and stayed with so many different people that she had no awareness of the stranger danger. At the age of six she climbed into a car with a red-headed man she had never met and let him drive her for fourteen hours before the police caught up with them. She had been fooled into getting into the car because he told her he knew her grandmother, but it turned out he was just an obsessive fan of her grandmother’s book.

Alice and her mother, Ella, have been plagued by bad luck for as long as Alice can remember. They have constantly moved about to try to outrun it but sometimes it always catches up with them. That all changes with the death of Alice's reclusive author grandmother, finally Ella says it is safe to stay in one place.

“Until Althea Proserpine died all alone on the grand estate she’d named the Hazel Wood, my mother and I had spent our lives as bad luck guests. We moved at least twice a year and sometimes more, but the bad luck always found us.”

Alice had never met Althea, but she used to frequently dream of meeting her and going to live with her. Ella tells Alice that Althea’s death means they are free and shortly after that they settle in an apartment in Brooklyn.

Alice gets a part-time job in a coffee shop and after a whirlwind romance Ella marries a rich man named Harold.

On day at work Alice is startled to see the redheaded man who kidnapped her in the coffee shop where she works. The only problem is he hasn’t aged at all in ten years and Alice knows if he is there then he is there for her. Before Alice can question him, he bolts but not before she realises he is was reading her grandmother’s book Tales From The Hinterland.

Alice was only ten when she first discovered a copy of her grandmother’s book and realised it was not just any book but a book full of fairy tales.

“I was already the kind of girl who closed my eyes and thumped the backs of furniture looking for hidden doors, and wished on second stars to the right whenever the night was dark enough to see them. Finding a green and book with a fairy tale name in the very bottom of an otherwise boring chest of drawers thrilled me.”

There were 12 stories in total in the book: The Door That Wasn’t There, Hansa The Traveller, The Clockwork Bride, Jenny And The Night Women, The Skinned Maiden, Alice-Three-Times, The House Under The Stairwell, Ilsa Waits, The Sea Cellar, The Mother And The Dagger, Twice-Killed Katherine, and Death And The Woodwife.

Naturally Alice was tempted by the story with her name in the title but before she could read more than the first line Ella interrupted her and told her the book was not for children. Ella had never restricted Alice from doing anything based on her age, so this ban intrigued Alice further. This and the haunting first line of the story.

“When Alice was born, her eyes were black from end to end, and the midwife didn’t stay long enough to wash her.”

No matter how hard she tried Alice could never find another copy of the book, so she took to obsessively reading anything she could about her grandmother. Until she was old enough to realise that maybe the reason she had never met Althea was because her grandmother wasn’t interested in meeting her.

Alice decides to wait to tell Ella about the man with the red hair because Ella has had a bad day.

The next day when Alice returns from school Ella has gone and there is no sign of Audrey or Harold in the apartment. There is a bad smell that lingers, and an envelope addressed to her with the title page from ‘Alice -Three – Times’ inside.

With nothing to go on and suspecting that all this is somehow connected to her grandmother’s book, Alice has nothing to go on and no knowledge of her grandmother’s book. In desperation she turns to classmate and superfan of her grandmother’s book Ellery Finch.

Unfortunately, Finch had his copy of Tales From The Hinterland stolen from him but he can remember some of the brilliantly eerie tales. Together they go to Harold’s apartment and are startled to hear that Ella has been taken by a group calling themselves ‘The Hinterland.’ Harold’s daughter Audrey also gives her a message from Ella to ‘stay the hell away from the Hazel Wood.’

Together Alice and Finch set out to find her grandmother’s estate the Hazel Wood in the hope that they will find some answers there.

I read some other reviews of The Hazel Wood prior to requesting this book and some of them were negative but I have to say I have no idea what they were on about. I loved this book and as soon as I finished it I wanted to read it again. The Hazel Wood is ideal for fans of Grimm fairytales.

I've given the book 3 stars, mostly because the first half of the book reads like an urban fantasy, a genre I have a soft spot for.

Firstly, the teenage characters are precocious and unrealistic, but so what? They are the characters that you wanted to be as a teenager, or dreamt of meeting and hanging out with. Alice and Finch are whip smart, overly cynical, rude, privileged teens living in NYC. They join up when Alice's mother is kidnapped and the solution to finding her seems to lie in her Grandmother's impossible to get hold of book and the cast of strange characters that are following her. There are some genuinely creepy moments and I adored the retelling of some of the gruesome tales from the book 'Tales from the Hinterland'.

It is when Alice enters the Hinterland that my interest and enjoyment started to wane. It almost felt as though a different author had written this part of the book and much of it felt quite formulaic and a bit of a let down after the great start. This part of the book seemed to sit much more in the YA genre, as though the author had been reminded this is who she is writing for.

Thanks go to the publishers and net galley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review.