The Hazel Wood is atmospheric, feminist, elegantly crafted and utterly enchanting. The characters are nuanced and the world is engrossing. I think it will find readers amongst fans of Maggie Stiefvater.

This book was literally the single biggest reading disappointment of the year for me. I really wanted to love this story. It was being marketed as a twisted fairytale, and those are my aesthetic for sure - the spookier and darker, the better - but this fell short in so many ways. Please remember that these are just my opinions! You are more than welcome to disagree or tell me your thoughts, but please do so respectfully. ❤

"I wanted that distance. I wanted that uncaring, 'here's your blood and guts and your fucked-up happy ending' fairy-tale voice."

→ genre marketing & writing ←
Marketing led me to believe that this was going to be the typical high fantasy world we see in fairytales. My first disappointment was in learning that the setting was modern-day New York, and the first half of the book straddled the line between contemporary and urban fantasy, at best.

The story doesn't pick up as an actual fantasy tale until after the halfway mark, and when it does, the writing immediately becomes much less enjoyable. Anyone who knows my reading tastes knows I love flowery prose, but many of the descriptions in the fantasy "half" of this book go far past flowery, straight through whimsical, and land smack-dab in nonsense.

I did get it, I did. And the shame of it boiled into something darker. Before my brain could catch up, I jerked the wheel and turned the car off the road, sending us rattling toward the trees.

→ Alice ←
Let me put it this way: The Hazel Wood is my 200th read of 2017, and there have only been two narrators out of the entire other 199 titles that held a candle to how terrible Alice is. She starts the book off poorly, rambling about her anger issues without giving us any reason as to why she's talking about them. As it progresses, she expresses actual, unwarranted physical violence towards other characters (including attempting to kill them via vehicular manslaughter because she feels guilty for her own poor choices).

She shouts and snaps constantly, has no respect for anyone (besides her mother), and judges everyone she meets hyper-critically. Her judgmental nature even borders on ableism when she meets a character who has been driven to a broken mental state by entering the Hazel Wood: Alice has several internal monologues about how little she trusts the woman's hygiene and the state of the woman's home's cleanliness, solely because she doesn't deem the woman "sane enough".

Even when she enlists the help of Finch, she is incessantly rude, critical, and offensive towards him. When she is finally called out on her offensive nature, she deflects, makes excuses, and has a general disregard for any harm she has caused. In one scenario, when he remarks on her misogynistic speech, her actual comeback is, "Oh, my god, Finch, go get a liberal arts degree" (I read this three times in hopes of making sense of it before deciding that she learned her snark from old men in facebook comment threads).

Beyond all of the ways in which Alice's character is incredibly harmful and is rarely - if ever - challenged for most of her behaviors, she's also just not well-written. She's hypocritical, self-contradicting, and outright boring.

Maybe Finch wasn't trying to be the sidekick in my story. Maybe he was trying to start one of his own.

→ Finch ←
Finch is introduced in a way that gave me actual optimism for the story: he's a classmate of hers who is kind and welcoming, seeks her friendship, and offers to face certain danger to help her find the Hazel Wood and her mother. Unfortunately, my optimism started to falter when I learned that Finch, the single black character in the story (in New York City, no less), is commented on multiple times as being unattractive and "a waste of wealth" - never challenged.

That was the first red flag - in a book with no commentary on anyone else's features, the single person of color is the only unattractive one? - but it worsens when Finch, despite being a very present figure throughout the story, is never fleshed out. He feels incredibly one-dimensional from start to finish, though some of this may just be to blame on Alice's refusal to let him speak for more than thirty seconds without telling him to shut up.

It felt like there was some small attempt to have a dialogue on racism and privilege when Finch talks to Alice about being afraid of racial profiling, but it's thrown away when Alice immediately insinuates that his father's wealth negates any racism he faces, and then further derails the conversation every time he tries to speak to her about it. By the end of the book, I resigned myself to the feeling that Finch was, in every shape and form, a Token Black Character™. His entire character arc felt so bad to read.

→ fairytales ←
Literally the only redeeming aspect of this book, for me, was the occasional time when we would get to hear one of Althea's tales. Sadly, they're incredibly few and far between - I think we only got two full tales in the entire book. I enjoyed those stories, and would probably read a bind-up of them, but within the context of the entire book, they weren't enough to salvage it.

→ FINAL THOUGHTS ←
This book was just a total disaster from start to finish for me, and the only reason I didn't DNF it at the 40% mark was because I was so desperately hoping it would improve by the end. I would more than likely not pick up any future books by Melissa Albert, and cannot, in good faith, recommend this story to anyone.

Thank you to Flatiron for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Hazel Wood was extremely well written, I really like the author's writing style. It was certainly a captivating and creative story, but with the Wonderland feel to it, it just wasn't my favorite. I am not a big fan of anything Wonderland related, but I know lots of other readers are and I imagine that most will love this book.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the main character Alice and that is another reason that this book wasn't my favorite. If I don't like the main characters or the narrator, it becomes hard for me to become invested in the story itself. And although I really liked the author's writing, the plot itself wasn't my favorite and I found it to be fairly slow moving. The story does have a creepy feel to it which was a nice change in the YA fantasy genre,

Overall, I really enjoyed the author's writing style, but didn't find myself invested in the main character Alice or the plot itself.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC of this book..

This book is modern day fairytale meets creepy thriller and I loved every minute of it. This was incredibly original and had so many twists that I did not expect. Really excited to continue watching this author.

Dark, modern-day fairy tale. Haunting language and interesting concept.

Melissa Albert's entertaining debut has much in common with Angela Carter, Deathless, and Uprooted. While lacking the dark, adult bite of The Bloody Chamber, The Hazel Wood approaches fairy tales and fables with all the hushed reverence of a supplicant at the altar. It is from this authorial admiration that the Hinterland and its inhabitants draw their power, for The Hazel Wood is a fairy tale about fairy tales, a nesting doll of legends, myths, and the power they wield across time and distance.

Heroine Alice Proserpine serves as guide to the fantastical. She possesses an acerbic undercurrent not commonly found in similar books; it's a welcome departure from stereotypical YA leads, whose flaws most often amount to traits found in any average human. Some of her running commentary on people and events even merits a genuine out-loud laugh. In addition, Alice knows the "rules" of surviving fairy tales, which lends a meta-twist that helps draw the reader in as a participant.

Ms. Albert's prose continues the theme of self-reference. One character is described as having "Captain Hook eyes—mournful and cornflower blue, with a phantom glaze of red when he was angry." Houses passed by night are "closed and clannish, like that one house you skip on Halloween." Much like her protagonists, the reader can never escape the fantastic, hemmed in by the use of lyrical imagery to describe the mundane.

Sidekick Ellery knows even more than the self-aware Alice, having read a rare copy of her grandmother's stories. This knowledge substitutes for depth of character though, as he feels a little flimsy by comparison. Were he the complementary character to Alice this might pose a problem, yet The Hazel Wood concerns itself with a mother-daughter relationship above all else. Ella, Alice's kidnapped mother, disappears early but lingers persistently through memory. If you interpret fairy tales as stories meant to impart key morals to the young, then The Hazel Wood's lesson would be on the maturation of one's relationship with her parents. Alice shifts from a dependent to an equal of her mother's through age and experience, much as children do the same in our world now.

Because The Hazel Wood draws so heavily on folklore its twists and turns may please more than they surprise. As the heroine gathers clues and talismans, enlisting a companion for her journey and before being forced to confront the most difficult tasks alone, a comfortable familiarity hangs over the narrative. What sets it apart from simple regurgitation, again, is Ms. Albert's penchant for descriptive language. The unearthly Hinterland bleeds out across the pages, coloring Alice's perception and, in turn, ours as well. It is a world so richly realized that it practically begs for a film adaptation, although I doubt that any effects could do the individual imagination justice.

Only two complaints keep The Hazel Wood from five-star status. In contrast to Alice's narration, which evokes a richness of setting in both "our" world and the Hinterland, the dialogue has a bit of a klunky, amateur delivery. While no worse than any average YA novel you can pluck off the shelves, when compared to the descriptive prose or Alice's reflections it jars an otherwise engrossing passage. The persistent references to contemporary fantasy pop culture are also a miss for me. They give the events a concrete date—or decade, at least—that may make the novel age less gracefully.

However, both of these shortcomings reflect personal pet peeves of mine, and so may not impact another's enjoyment in the slightest. I would heartily recommend The Hazel Wood to any fantasy genre fan hungering for a more ominous tale. My parting regret is that Ms. Albert listed the titles of every story in Tales from the Hinterland, but only revealed the plot for a handful. Perhaps she's planning a pseudo-sequel? I certainly hope so; those untold fables are only a few of the many promising shadows lurking along the fringes of The Hazel Wood.

RATING: ★★★ ½

I enjoyed the journey that this book took me on, although it would be difficult to describe it as just one thing. The author creates a dark contemporary coming-of-age fairy tale/fantasy that was interesting to read.
The first several chapters were very creepy and the author did a great job of evoking a sense of foreboding. Once Alice and Finch began their journey to the Hazel Wood eldritch occurrences and unnatural events made me feel unsettled and yet anxious to know what would happen next.
Alice was an engaging character and it was easy to feel connected with her. She felt young and fresh yet with an "old soul." And I could say the same for the whole book.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a dark fairy tale, a contemporary fantasy, a coming-of-age story or a YA novel.

This was such a unique story that was both memorizing and creepy. The fairy tales were dark and fascinating to read about. I don't think I have ever read anything like this before. That being said there were a few things that kept me from giving this 5 stars. First, the main character Alice was not that likable. To be fair there is a reason for that but I am just not a fan of stories where I can't root for someone...but that is a personal preference. Finch was definitely a great supporting character and would love to get a story based around his experiences. The overall story definitely kept my interest because I had no idea where this was going most of the time. Second, the story was very slow at parts but every time I wanted to put it down something weird or creepy happen and I needed to know more. This book will probably not be for everyone, but that can be said about all books...Overall, I throughly enjoyed this book and appreciate its uniqueness.

I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this book.

We journey with Alice, who is trying to find her mother that has been stolen away from her by a figure from Hinterland, a supernatural world. She is all Alice has ever known, as they have lived their life together narrowly escaping the bad luck that seems to always be right behind them. As she searches for her mother, she learns more about Hazel Wood, the fairy tale place where her author grandmother wrote books about (and had a huge fan following), but she was never able to read because her mother kept them from her. She connects with a classmate for help, Finch, a super fan who tries to get her up to speed on this place and all the stories, one of which curiously has her name in the title....

Man, this was such a different, curious, and unique plot! I have never read anything like this before, it was very much like Alice in Wonderland meets Van Helsing. It is dark. It is haunting. It is amazing. I was not sure this was for me at first, and even had to start reading this during the day as it was giving me the creeps at night. But, that means it is some excellent writing if that happens, right?? The only negative for me is that the plot got confusing for me at times, it kept twisting and turning and I got lost a bit. But it redeemed itself with the ending, which was fantastic. Overall this is a great book that I think you will love and I recommend!! Scheduled for a release date of 1/30/2018.

The Hazel Wood was creepy, mysterious and unfortunately very flawed. I was very excited to read it but ended up being disappointed. Perhaps I built it up too much in my mind before reading it? Like just look at that beautiful cover! And then there were the other reviews...other bloggers were just gushing with love for this book. I don't know but it wasn't what I thought it would be. I just hate when this happens. 

The story is about Alice, a young woman who appears to be plagued by bad luck. When her mother is kidnapped, Alice goes off on a journey to save her and discover more about her family background. I wanted to like Alice but she came off as too aggressive, too blunt...too everything that turns me off of a character. And characters are extremely important to a story. If I don't like the MC how am I going to care and become invested in their journey? So it's best to say that I spent most of the book not really caring about what was happening. I skimmed over some sections and put it down quite often. Actually, I finished two other books and took a reading break before I finally finished this. 

The writing style also didn't do it for me. I usually like the lyrical writing style but here it felt like it was trying too hard. The pacing was also uneven with certain parts feeling unnecessarily long or slow. And the ending? Well, that's what really let me down. The last 100 pages or so should have been the most important part of the book but ended up being a rushed and muddled mess. 

So, while I like the idea of The Hazel Wood it never lived up to what I thought it would be. The characters and the writing let me down. I need characters that I can get behind. I need to care about the plot, feel caught up in it and never want the story to end. Sadly, I couldn't wait to turn the final page and stop reading.

Noteworthy experiences while reading this book: This one started out a little weird and I almost didn't want to read it but glad I held out because WOW!!

Check out author's other books or related books? YES
Recommend this book? YES

Notes and Opinions: This one is a fairytale explosion! It was wonderfully written and man it couldn't have been any better. This one is a book that stands out above the rest and you won't be able to put it down. I know I couldn't! This one was dark, totally haunting, and a little scary! It was mesmerizing! If you love dark tales like the Brother's Grimm then this book is for you!! If you want the Disney version um go somewhere else. This story was ripe with a darker story than most young adult and man was it good. The characters were creepy and wonderful and the story was one that drew me in and didn't let me go. I loved how the story started with a little history it was engaging and really got you to care for these characters so by the time the real story started you were already in love with them. That was a great idea I have to say that I wish more stories did that.

Go Into This One Knowing: Very Original and more like your grandma's fairytales

The Hazel Wood is a strange and disappointing book. I didn’t really care for The Hinterland and found it confusing. The time spent there seemed to just go on forever, like one of their bicycle rides. I was disappointed, too, that we were never able to know what all the stories were in Althea’s book. And, despite being with the main character Alice during the entire book, I never really liked her. She, like the entire book, seemed hollow.

I do, however, think the author wrote some wonderfully evocative descriptions of The Hazel Wood and The Hinterland. And the stories we were treated to, were delightfully different.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A unique story concept and I adored the dark and twisted aspects of it. I found myself wanting to read more and not wanting to put it down. Though we only really see two characters through this story as the main focus, you still get a great in depth feel for the way the author wanted to go. If you like some dark and mysterious fantasy, I would recommend this one!

Oh my gosh! This book! I loved it from the very first page. It was dreamlike and real and creepy and had just the right amount of suspense and magic. The story starts in the "real world" but while it starts there, it still has a very otherworldly vibe to it and the feeling like you are waiting for the other shoe to drop. As Alice starts to encounter fans and things from her grandmother's book, the world only gets more and more otherworldly as things begin to happen that no one can explain. The moments where we get to read excerpts of stories from her grandmother's book fit into the story wonderfully and were so enjoyable. The Hinterland felt like an even darker wonderland and the events and characters within kept me turning the page and unable to book the book down. Easily one of my new favorite books!

(Link will go live on 01.10.18)

I judged the book by its cover. And the cover is beautiful, so I picked it up. Also, dark fairytales, a mysterious family history, travel between worlds, and this book sounded right up my alley. And while pieces taken outside of the whole were enjoyable, I found myself not as enamored by this one as I had hoped.

Alice and her mother have been running their entire lives, pursed by nameless, faceless, bad luck. That, and from the mystery and cultish fervor that swirls around Alice's grandmother who is best known for writing an obscure book of fairytales. Other than flee when bad luck arrives on your door, Alice knows there is one rule: don't interact with fans of her gradnmother's book. But when her mother disappears, Alice has no choice but to turn to a fan and fellow classmate, the only one who will believe the strangeness involved. And neither are fully prepared for what they get: perhaps those fairytales weren't fiction after all.

Part of my struggle with this book was due to the fact that it was simply incredibly slow for the first half of the book. It's not a monstrously long title by any means, but half of a book is still too long to take to get to the meat of the story. There's quite a lot of build up to Alice's mom's disappearance, and then, afterwards, it takes even longer somehow for Alice and Finch to get into the actual magical aspects of the story. This was even more frustrating because it didn't seem that this extra time was spent building anything. Alice and Finch, early in the story, have already bought into the concept that there are magical elements at play, so it's not character development that necessitates the slow movement. Further, there are about three or four mini adventures that they go through before even getting out of the city which felt like three or four more than were needed.

This slow beginning also had the unfortunate effect of making me begin to dislike Alice herself. Since the story goes some interesting places with her character in the second half of the book, the fact that the slowness of the first half had already damaged my enjoyment of her was pretty unfortunate. Yes, Alice had a non-traditional childhood and one that was made up largely of isolation and instability. And the author lays the groundwork for her anger early in the story. But all of that given, she's just kind of a mean person a lot of the time which made it hard for me to become invested in her emotional arc. Like I said, there's a payoff for some of this in the end. But I do think the slowness of the first half is directly responsible for the fact that damage control had to be done at all. Had we more quickly gotten into the actual story itself, there might have been less time for me to wallow around thinking that Alice was just kind of being a bitch to a bunch of people most of the time.

In the second half, things do pick up, and it was here that I found much of my enjoyment of the story. I loved the fact that the author fully embraced the darker side of fairytales. Throughout the story, we get to hear some of the stories that were in Alice's grandmother's collection, and they are perfectly pitched as darkly creepy and strange, without any clear moral or predictable pattern. This just makes it all the more shivery when the characters and worlds themselves begin to come to life.

Readers' mileage for this part of the story could also vary. There's a lot of mystery and obfuscation. Characters withhold information simply because they can. There are definite elements of "Alice in Wonderland" with the strangeness, nonsense, and bizarre mini scenes that Alice travels through. I enjoy nonsense fairytales, and I especially liked the darker aspects of this one. However, I can see how it could read as disjointed and, again, hard to connect to for some readers. Even I struggled a few times with the strange juxtaposition of classical dark magical elements with other very modern references. It was definitely jarring at times, but by this point I was so relieved to have the story picking up that I didn't mind.

This book was very hit and miss for me. There were parts of it that I absolutely loved (the fairytales themselves, most of the action in the second half, and the nice twist at the end), but I also very much struggled to get into the story. It starts slow and there were certain writing choices, just the way certain sentences were strung together, that were confusing and required me to read through twice, something I never love doing. I also wasn't sold on Alice as a character, though I did enjoy the later reveals with her. If you like dark fantasy stories and can handle a slow start and a healthy dose of the strange, I'd recommend giving "The Hazel Wood" a go!

I had seen so many people losing their minds over this, so I was quite excited to get a chance to borrow an arc from a friend and honestly, I don't know how to review this.

Alice is the sort of MC that I struggle with. She's rude and I loathed her pretty much the entire time I was reading it. Because I didn't care about her, I didn't care about what she was going through. I liked Finch, but he wasn't enough to carry the story for me.

Plot wise, it was sloooooooow. It felt like nothing happened for the first half of the book and even when I got to the end, I still had my WITAF face on. The writing was pretty, yet also somewhat pretentious. There were several times that I didn't feel smart enough to read the book and I did spend a lot of time confused.

I don't know if it was the hype or I was in a book hangover or it's just a case of "it's not you book, it's me". I do know that I read this in June and wanted to try again, so I requested it...yet, I now can't bring myself to take the time to reread.

Overall, I like the idea and the creepiness and I did somewhat enjoy the story, but I never felt captivated by it.

**Huge thanks to Flatiron Books for providing the arc free of charge**

This book is a delightful creepy tale, of upside down fairy tales that do not resemble any of the bed time tales i grew up.  We have our main character Alice who lives with her mother off of whatever person or family they can con into believing their tales.  Alice has a some what eccentric famous grandmother who wrote a collection of fairy tales that are very rate and impossible to find.  What you think is happening as you read along this creepy tale, which i was pretty sure was a kidnapping murder mystery.  What i got was a delightful surprise of one my favorite kinds of stories disguised in this wonderful tale.  If you like creepy and not knowing quite where the story is going this one will delight and impress you.

The start of Hazel Wood was so good and kept you guessing, but as soon as they actually went to the Hinterlands it was like the author just gave up on the story and it felt very shallow and rushed. I was pretty disappointed with the ending and most of the story once they actually got to the Hinterlands. It seemed like there was a big build-up of mystery and intrigue and then once in the Hinterlands most of the story and development was just glossed over.

If you are one of the many who think fairy tales are the stuff of childhood, then get prepared. The Hazel Wood may be built upon fairy tales but they have been amped up and twisted at least a few times.

Alice Crewe knows that her grandmother Althea Proserpine wrote a book of fairy tales that has a devoted cult following. She's tried to read them, but the one time she found a copy of the book, it was snatched away from her.

For years, Alice and her mother Ella have lived a monadic lifestyle, always trying to elude the bad luck that seems to follow them. When events take a terrifying turn for the worst, Alice knows that she must find the Hazel Wood and attempt to set things right.

I was carried away by this story. It had a great mix of real world and magic, that blended so well that it blurred the boundary. Did the Hazel Wood really exist in our world, or was it imagination based. Could you wander into it if you didn't know it was there. At times I found myself yelling aloud warning to Alice and Finch as though they could hear me through the pages. Perhaps they could hear me and my words helped change their stories. Who can really tell.

I loved the characters of Alice and of Finch. She is angry inside thought can't pinpoint why. Most of the time she can hold it together, which speaks of her strong will. When she turns to Finch for help and support, she shows her smart side that sense his strength of character and his resourcefulness.

This is a wonderful debut novel by author Melissa Albert. I have no doubt that her future tales will have me gripping my book with white knuckles as I hang on her every word.

This book is incredibly unique! It's suspenseful, mysterious, eerie, and heartbreaking with a background of fairy tales weaving through the whole thing.

Alice is 17, and has been on the move with her mom for her entire life. Stay too long in one place, and the Bad Luck will catch up with them. But then they receive a letter informing them that Althea, her grandmother who wrote the famous book of strange fairy tales, has died. Her mom declares that the Bad Luck is gone, and they begin to settle into a real life.

Little do they know, their troubles are just beginning.

The fairy tales in this book are incredibly dark and twisted, which only adds to the eeriness of the book.

I enjoyed Alice and her quest to discover who she was. She went on a very emotional journey of discovery. I also enjoyed Ellery, her friend/sidekick, although I was never really sure if their relationship was friendly or romantic.

The biggest problem I had with this book was the language. There was a lot of swearing, and it added nothing to the story. In fact, it would have felt MORE fairy-tale-like without the swearing.