I’m late posting this review but I figured it deserved one all the same. I was attracted to the premise of this one, and the cover was gorgeous. But I’ve had trouble getting into it and been lacking the desire to finish it. I’m not DNFing it, simply putting it on hold. It’s not what I’m looking for in a read right now, but I hope to come back to it.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy,

This was sadly a DNF for me. I really struggled to connect to the writing style.

I really tried to give this one another chance, but the writing style just isn’t for me. It’s very lyrical and confusing to me.

The cover it gorgeous though ❤️

I had to DNF this book about 12 chapters in. The story, to me, seems too all over the place for me to honestly continue. I like the premise of the story, the main character just isn’t for me. And then she listens to this boy she dubbed “Darkness” and honestly I don’t think he’d be able to get as much as a sentence out of his mouth if I were in her place. I’m sure it’s lovely and I’d recommend it to a friend who is just wanting a book to read but I’m not sure about the genre it’s being marketed as. It wasn’t for me, but someone will love it. Which is always important.

This was a fast and mostly entertaining read, but the ending really fell apart. The story starts with a girl who sees things that are not there and is labeled as having anxiety. Personally, I think her parents should have looked into a better diagnosis but still. From there, we meet her sisters who are fairly indistinguishable and not very developed. There is also a boy in the attic named Darkness but the romance angle with him is very underdeveloped and feels tacked on. It almost feels like the author thought YA needed romance. I wish more time has been spent on the sisters. Every other chapter was from the Witch of the Woods point of view. These chapters seemed overly long and her identity was obvious from the start. Once they return to the other world, the book starts to fall apart. Rescues are really easy, and the ending seems a letdown in how non-dramatic and vague it is. The last chapter reads more like a list. Throughout there is more show than tell, as character development does not happen. Ona final side note, everyone is supposed to have one type of magic except for the main character, who someone controls dreams, foxes, and weather and has offensive magic. I really don’t like when it is decided to make the main character overly special with no explanation.

"The waking forest has secrets. To Rhea, it appears like a mirage, dark and dense, at the very edge of her backyard. But when she reaches out to touch it, the forest vanishes. She’s desperate to know more—until she finds a peculiar boy who offers to reveal its secrets. If she plays a game." I read this and knew I had to read this story asap!
Think of this as a retelling of a creepy Sleeping Beauty! Loved every single thing about this story!

I so wanted to love this story. It just got to be too wordy- I wanted it to get to the point. Then I wasn't sure what the point was. After a bit just didn't care. Maybe I'll try reading it again sometime... I love magical realism and this could be it, but it wasn't quite there. Odd as this will sound, it might just really make an interesting movie. There are teens and YAs out there who may enjoy the story.

Well, this was a weird book. :/

The cover and synopsis drew me in but unfortunately, this book just wasn't for me. I didn't find the story very interesting and even at the end, I just didn't really care about the characters. If you've read reviews about this book, you'll see that the writing is described as beautiful and I can't say otherwise. However, I skimmed some paragraphs because it just wasn't fast-paced enough for me. You can guess the twists before they happen. Honestly, if I hadn't been sent a copy, I would have DNF it early on.


(Thank you to the publisher for letting me read and review an e-ARC via Netgalley)

3 stars

The Waking Forest had a beautiful start that left me dying for more. The concept of the book is somewhat similar to Pan’s Labyrinth and as I big fan, I knew it was going to have beautiful writing. Alyssa Wees did not disappoint with the writing, I found it beautiful and lyrical and would gladly read more from this author.

But the more I read, the more I lost interest. That sounds bad I know, but it has 3 different stories and eventually they connect. It took a while for the connection to happen and I just didn’t understand half of the things I was reading. I had to read several parts over to grasp what was happening. A dream within a dream is a hard thing to grasp but I wish it could have been explained better and was developed better.

What I did love was the mental illness rep, its nice to see the main character of a book who I can relate to! Plus, Rhea has a strong bond with her sisters and I appreciate seeing a strong sibling bond. Its good to focus on a good family instead of the usual evil family members.

Overall, the book won’t be for everyone, it wasn’t for me, but if you love books that have a unique concept then I say give this one a go.

The Waking Forest ended up not being the book for me. I couldn't connect with it and it never hooked me.

This book was lyrical and haunting and maybe a little too wordy, but it is a fun, spooky book.

I would recommend reading this book in the fall, around Halloween. There's a witch that lives with her collection of foxes in the enchanted woods, then there's Rhea, whose days are filled with visions and nights with nightmares. She sees things others do not and quite often, her dreams come to life. When she discovers the spirit of a boy existing the shadows of her attic, everything changes. Suddenly, her dreams become more real than they've ever been.

The book is told between alternating points of view of Rhea and the witch in the forest. It's a spooky book that fans of horror and dark fantasy will love. The only downside is that the writing is very wordy and can run on about one thing for a long time. But I think that's a personal preference thing. If you like artsy writing that feels like poetry, you'll be right at home.

Source: NetGalley.

The author is a beautiful writer, I thought for sure I was going to love this. The book ended up being everywhere and became so hard to keep interested in. The different POV were interesting.

You know how sometimes you get lucky and you read a book when you're in just the right mood for it? This was that book for me. I really, really enjoyed this book. I'm not going to try and explain the story, but I'll say it is deeply steeped in dreams, and I felt like I was dreaming through the whole thing. At first, the story goes back and forth between a young woman living near the beach with her family, and a witch living in a dark fairy tale type castle in an enchanted forest. Then a little more than halfway through, the stories meet up and have a baby, and we watch this baby grow into a new story. Is it confusing? Sure! But that's okay, dreams are confusing. Is the language lovely and descriptive, while occasionally falling into a purple prose word salad? You betcha! But it totally worked for me, because it made it feel more creepy and dreamlike. There's some definite creepy menace feels going on, sometimes strong, sometimes more background, but always there. A great read for when you don't really care about the story making complete sense, you just want to be drawn into some atmosphere.

The blurb had all the dark, creepy, fairy tale vibes, and I was all here for that.

The Waking Forest is a twisting tale of darkness, mystery, surrealism, and … foxes! And who the heck doesn’t love foxes?!

The plot is told in two storylines: Rhea, the girl who can see the world decaying and dying around her, and the Witch in the Woods, who grants wishes to children.

Each story had something to offer. Rhea was banter and mystery. The Witch in the Woods is dark and surreal. But both have foxes. And let’s be honest, that’s really the important part here, right?

My Thoughts:

- The writing was really beautiful in places and evocative and thought-provoking. There were so many sections that just gripped me and made me pause because of how much they rang true. The prose itself was a bit of a double-edged sword for me (more on that in a minute). But sometimes, just sometimes, it was so dang accurate that it caught me off-guard and I really had to re-read it to absorb the whole thing. Sections were poignant and relatable and capture the essence of feelings so perfectly.

- The Waking Forest is a Sleeping Beauty retelling, and it does a fantastic job of capturing that fairy tale feel. I will say that I thought this was lost in the last third or so of the book, but for the first two parts? Phew. It had all the creepy, sinister vibes of something about to happen, like the real fairy tales (not the Disney sort). Wees masterfully blended whimsical fantasy and imagery with painful and emotional plots, marrying the two in what ended up being a delightfully surreal read.

- As a sister of sisters, my favorite thing about this story was easily the banter. And banter they do. You know, as teen girls will. When the four R’s get together, what happens is glorious and snarky and delicious. Pretty much every time they’re all there.

- This is a story within a story … within a story. It’s bookception. But in a cool way. The two storylines, at first, seem like they have nothing in common, but bit by bit, they come together as the story unfolds. Wees cleverly drops hints and clues that, if you pay attention, tie the two together, and I had inklings pretty early on of how they were connected. Yet, I wasn’t disappointed when the two finally aligned, because I didn’t feel like I had guessed a plot twist. I felt, instead, like this was a journey I was on and it had reached its natural destination, that of course it would end here all along. Mostly because it wasn’t presented as a plot twist or a gotcha, and that felt nice.

- Wees cleverly alludes to other fairy tales in the prose, and it’s kind of cool. I mean, sometimes. This is another one of those double-edged swords. I actually can’t talk too much about this because of spoilers, but it’s always nice, in my opinion, when there’s a little nod to other source material. But here’s the downfall for me: I expected them to have more importance or weight in the story, and they don’t. I mean, the allusions are pretty heavy-handed and in your face, so you really can’t miss them. So I expected, at first, that of course they would add up to something. But no. They basically just show up as name drops and are gone, without any real bearing on the story.

Sticking Points:

- All the main characters’ names began with the letter R. I have a really tiny mammal brain, and it basically overheated trying to tell them all apart. There’s the parents, Reece and Rafael Ravenna. Then, there’s the girls. Four of them. Rhea (aka Ree) is the protagonist, but then there’s also Rose, Raisa, and Renata (aka Ren). As the protagonist, Rhea was easy to remember, and Rose was easy enough, but for the life of me, I couldn’t keep Raisa and Renata straight. Then, you add on the fact that their last name is Ravenna, and it’s just too much for me.

- While beautiful, the writing is a bit … purple. There’s so much figurative language clogging up the prose that I sometimes had difficulty figuring out what was happening, and they didn’t all make sense. Now, if you’re a fan of purple prose … this is your book. This is your jam. You will for sure love this, because it is quite lovely. But for me personally, it was just too much.

- Things are repeated. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. In triplicate, often. I actually have no idea why this is? I guess three’s supposed to be a pretty lucky/magical number? Maybe it has some relation to fairy tales that I’m not aware of. But the prose was so repetitive in places, repeating things three times for seemingly no reason. Well, that’s not true. I imagine it was for dramatic effect. But it was done so often that it just ended up annoying me.

- The last third of the book changes in tone and ends up more of a protagonist goes on a quest to save the world type plot. Which was … weird? Also, too easy. Saving the world is supposed to be hard, yo. The writing changed, and the story seemed to shed its fairy tale vibe to become more of a straight-forward quest story. The excessive descriptions were even toned down. Unfortunately, the biggest thing I took away from the ending was that it was too easy. Okay, sure, there were parts that were supposed to be difficult and read like they were difficult, but I wasn’t buying it. I never really got that sense of stakes, that fear like, “Oh, shoot, something’s about to happen. Can the hero pull through?!” Instead, I just had this sense of inevitability about how it would end, which really just undermined the climax, which felt so short and over in a bang (sort of literally).

I wasn't sure what to expect, but I enjoyed reading this. An interesting story with fun characters. Well written.

Spooky fairytales are my thing.

It’s been a bit since I read this and I still don’t know how to feel about it. At times I truly did enjoy it. It’s a unique concept that keeps you guessing, with intrigued and twists and turns. It’s a good, old-fashioned fairytale, and from start to finish, it knows the story it’s trying to tell.

But at the same time, I felt like something was missing. Something kept me from truly connecting with the story. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it, and ended up skimming the last bit. The emotional connection, the thing that keeps you late at night reading, it just wasn’t there for me.

It’s hard to explain, because I didn’t hate the book. It was enjoyable, but I didn’t love it either. It’s almost as if I’m indifferent to the book. The premise is interesting, the writing nice, the story flows, I just never truly connected with it.

Holy wow, this book has some of the most gorgeous writing I’ve ever read! Lush, evocative, subtle hints of spooky and twisty, the writing really helped convey the fantastic.

While the story itself is hard to follow sometimes (particularly in the back half of the book), I found I didn’t care. I was just merrily on the ride, eating up the beautiful, haunting descriptions with a big fat spoon.

An amazing debut novel! I love fantasy and this book has it all, evil king, princess, witch, magic, wide range of magical creatures and of course the most important part a GREAT story. Will definitely be recommending this book to other fantasy lovers!!

The premise of this novel reminds me of a blend between Hansel and Gretel and Peter Pan. Rhea, our protagonist, lives with her parents, sister, and pet fox. Dreaming, and unable to know if they are reality or not, she sees this shadow of a boy (reminded me of the naughty Peter Pan) that believes they have met before. Slowly, members of her family start disappearing (but no one else believes they ever existed but her).

In an alternate universe, we come across a witch who is visited by a fox. This witch grants children wishes.

"The waking forest has secrets. To Rhea, it appears like a mirage, dark and dense, at the very edge of her backyard. But when she reaches out to touch it, the forest vanishes. She’s desperate to know more—until she finds a peculiar boy who offers to reveal its secrets. If she plays a game.

To the Witch, the forest is her home, where she sits on her throne of carved bone, waiting for dreaming children to beg her to grant their wishes."

Eventually, the stories are woven together. I think this is where I got lost. I enjoyed the chapters alternating between characters and them being separate. Also, people dreaming and being involved in different worlds is getting a bit old for me, and I find myself not enjoying those stories as much. I wanted to love it and I felt like there was so much more potential, I just think the execution lost me a little bit.

A dark, mysterious forest. A witch that grants wishes, a girl with nightmarish visions. I was intrigued and hopeful for The Waking Forest. And while some of the prose was beautiful, it quickly grew out of hand.

There was some downright beautiful writing in The Waking Forest. Unfortunately, a lot of it was drowned out by the overwhelming amount of purple prose. It got in the way of enjoying the story and the creepy, dream-like setting for a good portion of the book.

And then things got weird.

And not the good kind of weird.

There were two POVs throughout the story: Rhea, the girl with nightmare visions, and the Witch of Wishes, a witch that lived in the woods granting children’s wishes. I was intrigued by these two, and I really wanted them to meet (and for there to be some magical queerness). But that didn’t really happen.

And when the two POVs merged, it grew impossible to follow the story at all. It became a chore to read, and I don’t like when vacuuming the entire house and deep-cleaning the carpets becomes a more enjoyable experience than reading.

I was intrigued enough to get about halfway through the book, but never invested enough to want to keep reading. And eventually, I just got tired of it. So I had to DNF it.