Such great stories. Melissa Albert has created such a beautiful, spooky, uncanny world in The Hazel Wood. I would read any part of this universe.

A delectable treat for fans of the Hazel Wood series as well as any reader who loves dark fairytales and folklore. This collection of Grimm-style tales brings us directly into the rich, warped fantasy world hovering in the background of The Hazel Wood and The Night Country. Recommended if you like your lore with sharp edges!

I love dark fairy tales. Though this duology was very mediocre, the tales that the world was based off of were far more interesting and fun. It brought much more depth to the characters we already knew, and just the fun and joy of short fairy tales! I'm glad I received an arc of this collection of stories from the hinterland.

This collection is perfect for fans of classic fairy-tales, especially the Grimms’ tales. Every story is just the right amount of dark, morbid and magical. My only complaint is that some stories run a bit too long compared to classic fairy-tales. I would love to see shortened, graphic-novel versions of these stories in the style of Through the Woods. My favorites are “Hansa the Traveler,” “Jenny and the Night Women,” and “The Mother and the Dagger.”

You definitely don’t need to have read The Hazel Wood and The Night Country to enjoy this collection, but it is a wonderful supplemental resource for those who have read the novels.

Disclosure: I received an e-ARC copy of this title from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I won a copy of this book in a sweepstakes but all my opinions are my own. I have read both of Melissa Albert's other books and while I enjoyed them I almost found them to be too dark and twisty. This collection of twisted tales definitely left me satisfied. I wish this had come out inbetween her previous novels, though I understand holding on to the mystery of Alice. I thought these tales were dark and twisty, but also satisfying connections to characters already established in The Hazel Wood and The Night Country. This was a good companion series that only builds on the mythos of the previous novels in the best way.

Releases: January 12th, 2021

I was sooooo excited for this book! And I mean... so excited. This was from my The Hazel Wood review in 2018: "I think a separate book of just the Tales of the Hinterland would be so amazing. The stories were to die for. So creepy, spooky, and original. I'd love to read all of them.". Alas, I am very disappointed. I really loved The Hazel Wood and, while I have yet to read The Night Country, I have been anticipating Tales From the Hinterland for over two years, so I jumped on the opportunity to have an eARC.

I recognized some of the stories from The Hazel Wood and enjoyed reading over those ones again. The text of the same stories in my copy of The Hazel Wood differed from the Tales From the Hinterland eARC, which I found interesting. Overall, I felt a lot of the stories were relatively similar. Reading them in a collection, they followed the same style story arc nearly every single time. The eeriness and spookiness I felt in the first few stories left the pages once I got about halfway through. What made me want a separate Tales From the Hinterland was how creepy the stories were in The Hazel Wood, but I didn't get that from these. Maybe if I read only one a day or something, the stories would have stood better individually, but I disliked them back to back. I had my favorites, but overall I am very disappointed... which BrEaKs My HeArT :(

Thank you to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for an Advanced Copy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A beautiful, eerie companion to the Hazel Wood series. It really made me want to go back and reread the first and second books now that I have a much deeper understanding of the fairy tales and their effect on the world once their stories are broken. The description touts full-page illustrations which, unfortunately, do not come with the NetGalley advanced copy. I look forward to seeing them once this gets published and delivered to my library.

I absolutely loved this one! As I was reading A Hazel Wood I had wished I could read Tales from the Hinterland so I was excited when I got the opportunity from NetGalley! This book is filled with sinister fairy tales which I love. Each one is its own interesting story but they all felt tied together and I actually wanted more. They were dark but still had an overall good feeling to them. Melissa Albert is a great author, recommend this as well as her other books!

Tales from the Hinterland is a collector's piece. The stories are well-written, and for any fan of The Hazel Wood it will be a jewel of ah-ha moments and it sounds like the final published version will be a jewel of a book as a physical object. Albert, as she suggested in her novels, fills Tales from the Hinterland with dark mystery and violence, hearkening back to the original Brothers Grimm (shoutout to my English major homies who know about Grimm's Law). In style and execution I found it most similar to Rigg's Tales of the Peculiar and Bardugo's The Language of Thorns. The stories are more about atmosphere than any character development or growth. There aren't life lessons here, instead a delightful dip into the stories her fans have heard so much about without being able to read, until now. If you're already a fan, I think you'll devour these stories and be delighted.

Thanks to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for the ARC for review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this e-arc in exchange for my opinions, all of which are my own.

I am clearly in the minority with this review, but this book just wasn’t my jam. After reading 3 stories, I lost interest. In light of this, I did not finish the book.

Firstly, thank you to Netgalley and Flatiron Books for the opportunity to read a galley edition of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Can I just say that my skin is still crawling from these stories? Unlike The Hazel Wood and The Night Country, Tales From the Hinterland is not one continuous story, but is instead a collection of fairy tales, ostensibly from a place called the Hinterland (all of that will have context if you've read Albert's other two books, but you don't need the context to enjoy the collection).

When I was a kid, I had a collection of folk tales from around the world. I used to stay up late reading them, and I remember the chill of finding something just a little unnerving in the stories--a little strange, maybe a little dark--and wondering if I'd heard a noise outside my bedroom window--a woodcutter? a tiny human made all of thistles? an old magician whispering my name?--and all of the illustrations seemed too intricate to memorize, and I was never quite convinced they were exactly the same each time I looked.

Anyway, Tales From the Hinterland manages to catch that exact same feeling, but without relying on the overstimulated mind of an eight year old with anxiety and chronic insomnia. The tales move between whimsy and brutality, all while maintaining a lush and even storyteller's voice. You can almost imagine the pages crinkling (I mean, if you're not reading it in e-format, I guess you don't have to imagine them...) and the lightening flashing outside as you read.

A solid 5/5. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to buying a copy for myself to re-read in the future.

I received this complimentary ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Tales from the Hinterland is a delightfully, sinister read. This book has it all, from girls turned to stars, maidens skinned alive, and even to forced marriages to the sea. The lyrical prose creates an absolutely horrifying and beautiful experience that makes this novel hard to forget. When the final version is published, I can only imagine how the illustrations will enhance the stories.

While I have not read The Hazel Wood or Night Country I found I was not prevented from enjoying this book. You can read this book as a stand alone, or as I intend, a prequel to the Hazel Wood.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

I really enjoyed this one! I really really liked THE HAZEL WOOD when I read it back in 2018, but didn’t like THE NIGHT COUNTRY when I read it in April this year. But, I was really intrigued to read this because I was getting some serious LANGUAGE OF THORNS vibes and so when I got an ARC, I was really excited. So, I read it in about two days. Some stories I enjoyed more than others, some I don’t really remember, but all of them had a really cool aesthetic that I could definitely get behind. My thoughts on this book kinda flip flop depending on when you ask me, but right now it’s sitting at a solid 3.5 stars.

I adore Melissa Albert's The Hazel Wood series very much. I really wanted to read the fairy tales written in the book. Although some of the fairytales in this book are written in the other books, it was very enjoyable to read them all together. These fairy tales by Melissa Albert are darker and certainly not one of those fairytales that you always read. Death and the Woodwife and Hansa the Traveler were my favorite fairytales in this book. You can read this book as a standalone, but you'll still want to read the whole series after you read this one. I can't wait to see all those beautiful illustrations when the book is published.
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Thanks to NetGalley and Flatiron for the arc. Nice collection of fairy tales. Fairy tales you can lose yourself in.

Journey into the Hinterland, a brutal and beautiful world where a young woman spends a night with Death, brides are wed to a mysterious house in the trees, and an enchantress is killed twice—and still lives.

This ARC was given to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Creepy and magical, ethereal with a hint of danger, Tales from the Hinterland is a collection of sinister fairytales that I could not put down. These are not your traditional fairytales; no dashing prince to save the day and no glass slipper that perfectly fits a maiden's foot. These are much more than that. Complex and compelling, haunting and eerie, many of these stories had me looking over shoulder searching for something lurking behind me. Get ready to once again be transported to the enchanted lands of the Hinterland.

Though they are not your average tales, they read like folklore that has been passed down for generations. Stories to warn children from opening windows at night or straying from the path. The 12 tales in this book were each an adventure that I was sad to see come to an end. Don't go looking for classic happy endings- the Hinterland is not always kind.

All I ever wanted from The Hazel Wood universe was the dark fairytales that made up that atmospheric world. The book itself I found to be somewhat disappointing, and what I wanted most at the end was the stories instead. Thank the lord that Melissa Albert came through!

This is a collection of twelve fairytales that are both dark and deliciously beautiful to read. I think it was just the right amount of stories as I was starting to get a little tired toward the end. There are some clear themes across most of these stories. For one, every single one features a female as the star, which I loved. There's a lot of women giving birth, weddings, lovers dying, twisted magic, and all around macabre and morbid tones.

The Door That Wasn't There
After a mother vanishes from inside her locked room without a trace, her daughters discover exactly how when their new stepmother locks them inside that same room.

Hansa the Traveler
After being kept tucked away from the night, the granddaughter of the moon sails to the end of the world to free her mother, a star. This felt like the prettiest and sweetest one.

The Clockwork Bride
A young girl makes a deal with a terrible toymaker, who demands her first-born child in exchange for lifting an enchanted sleep on her younger brother.

Jenny and the Night Women
A farmer girl, grown from an apple blossom, takes matters in her own hand to keep her parents spoiling her. This story is where the darkness and more macabre tones really started to kick in.

The Skinned Maiden
A prince falls for a woman in a bearskin, but is unable to get her to marry him until he takes both the bear and her mortal skin. This might be my favourite because of how chilling it is, with a woman of nothing but muscle and bone and organs.

Alice-Three-Times
A child born with all-black eyes, she ages all at once three times in her life, and exacts revenge on those who treated her poorly. I remember this one best from The Hazel Wood.

The House Under the Stairwell
Three sisters complete a ritual to receive dreams that show them the man they will marry, and the eldest's groom is to be a lion in a mask. This felt like a spin on the twelve sisters dancing tale.

Ilsa Waits
A young girl watches as death takes everyone in her family, and dogs his steps as she grows up until she becomes something less human herself.

The Sea Cellar
One sister is gambled away to be the bride of a house that none ever leave for the family to prosper, but the younger sister won't rest until she finds out what happens to the eldest.

The Mother and the Dagger
A woman, desperate for a child, cheats a spell granted by a witch and gives birth to a doll child.

Twice-Killed Katherine
The daughter of a sorcerer with a green thumb is taken under his wing, only for Death to follow her more closely than anyone else with slippery fingers.

Death and the Woodwife
A princess born of thorns and flowers catches the eye of Death's heir, who is determined to make her his bride.

And few of them lived happily ever after.

One thing I was disappointed about in reading the e-ARC? No pretty illustrations!

Ah, the Hinterland. Seems like an absolutely terrible place to take a vacation, but the best setting ever for dark fairy tales.

I can’t get enough of Melissa Albert’s Hazel wood series, and this collection of dark fairy tales set in the Hinterland (some featuring familiar characters, some populated by new faces) was no exception.

I don’t think there’s anyone out there doing better work in the traditional dark fairy tale sub-genre at the moment than Albert, who hooked me with her world building with the first book set in this world and has continued to captivate me since.

These tales are perfect for readers like me who love very dark, very creepy stuff, but only as long as it doesn’t go too far. For me that’s no graphic/on-page rape or torture. Albert’s macabre collection toes the line between delightfully disturbing and just plain upsetting perfectly, as has her entire Hazel wood collection.

Though all 16 stories in this book are gorgeously rendered, here are my favorites:

-The Clockwork Bride (this has the feel of what I’ve always wanted Nutcracker adaptations to be but they never seem to achieve)
-Jenny and the Night Women
-Alice-Three-Times
-The Sea Cellar
-The Mother and the Dagger
-Twice-Killed Catherine

As a standalone, this book would work for someone who likes deliciously dark fairy tales. Melissa Albert's imagination is a frightening, dazzling place, and I was consistently impressed by the dreadful atmosphere and surprising conclusions of many of these stories.

But having read The Hazel Wood and The Night Country, I found I didn't want to keep reading this collection. Too much of a good thing? I love that the stories provide a backdrop for the two novels, but I think part of the horror and the fascination is being fed these fairy tales in bits and pieces, never getting to see the whole. Fair disclosure, though - I tend to dislike the "extra" books that get published after a series is complete. I like leaving a thing when it's done.

A good pick for the mega-fan, but not something I'll be purchasing for my collection.