CG Drews’ "Don't Let the Forest In" masterfully blurs the line between reality and imagination in a dark, haunting exploration of friendship, trauma, and the monsters we create—both literal and metaphorical. Drews’ writing captures the raw intensity of adolescence, where emotions are heightened and relationships feel life-or-death. The forest, as a setting, is lushly atmospheric, and Drews paints it vividly, making it both a refuge and a place of terror. "Don't Let the Forest In" offers a deeply moving and unsettling tale that lingers well after the final page. It’s a must-read for those who crave emotionally driven, gothic-tinged stories about the power of creativity, the shadows of our minds, and the lengths we’ll go to protect the ones we love.

After returning to boarding school after a holiday break, Andrew (a writer) notices his best friend and crush, Thomas (an artist), is acting strangely. Thomas is the resident bad boy at school, but then it turns out his parents are missing, Andrew’s twin (Dove) is avoiding them, and they suspect Thomas’s art is creating woodland monsters that are now out for their blood. Kind of hard to get homework done when you’re fighting those things all night, despite your debilitating anxiety.

Don’t Let the Forest in is a fascinating, dark fairytale of a novel that examines obsessive first love, the tortured artist, the LGBT+ spectrum, mental illness, and—as the show Buffy used to put it—how high school can be hell. This book is for you if you enjoy Eldritch horror, psychological horror, spooky forests (and associated body horror), cottagecore, lush, but creepy vibes, and haunting narratives at boarding schools.

This book…wow. I went in with high expectations as someone who has been following along with the release drawing closer and I wasn’t let down! Firstly Andrew was such a heart warming chaste whilst he was exploring and understanding his asexuality. It was such a joy to read such great representation!
I am thoroughly obsessed with Thomas and how protective he is of Andrew.
This story had a great balance of horror mixed with small slithers of romance, friendship and plot twists. The ending was very unexpected and the illustrations were GORGEOUS

So so so so sooooooo good. Loved the balance between heartwarming and unsettling lol. I’m going to be thinking about this one for some time.

Unreliable narrator plus more. We realize what's going on at the same time Thomas does, which is interesting because Andrew is the sole narrator. I cried at the end. Tags: dark academia, nature horror, asexuality, ptsd, unreliable narrator, graphic depictions of mental health crises.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. This book officially publishes on 10/29/24!

I will say right at the start that I don’t believe I was the ideal reader for this book. Being an older reader, the characters were difficult for me to relate to, as this novel takes place at a private high school. That being said, I really enjoyed the unique premise of this novel, the LGBTQIA+ representation, and the format of the book. I do wish that some more things were tidied up by the end, as I do still have some lingering questions. Overall, however, if YA horror is your favorite genre or one that is comfortable for you, you would absolutely love this book.

I have so many feelings about this book. It was dark and interesting enough, but about halfway through, Andrew really started to get on my nerves. I couldn't understand how he could be so oblivious and whiny. I just kept pushing through. So many things unraveled in the end, and it totally made sense. I don't want to give any spoilers, so I can't really say too much. But, if you are into dark gothic stories, this is a good one to read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this ARC!

I’m not a huge horror person, but sometimes a story comes along that makes me want to leave my comfort zone. This was one of those stories. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. Everything about this book was just so good: the psychological horror, the atmosphere, the dark fairy tale vibes. The thing I think I liked most of all was the relationship between Andrew and Thomas. The love that they had for each other was so deep and the lengths they were willing to go for each other was beautiful in a dark way.

I also appreciated the asexual representation. It always makes me happy to see ace rep popping up in different genres. Also, can we take a second to appreciate this gorgeous cover? It perfectly encapsulates the vibe of this book. Gosh, I loved this book so much. It might be one of my favorites that I’ve read this year.

I'm much more interested in sapphic horror so I'm not entirely sure why I requested this one, my bad.

This story was truly a haunting experience. I’m not sure that I can find a better way to describe it. I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes, just trying to figure out what everything meant. Was this a fever dream ignited by the absolute devastation experienced by Andrew? Or was there really a horrible magic born out of it that caused the forest to infiltrate every facet of his life and attack with an unforgiving vengeance?!

The prose is so beautiful and poetic in this. The descriptions, to me, felt deeply romantic, if not a little macabre. I know that sounds strange, but the writing resonated with me and the entire experience was unlike anything I’ve read before.

I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for an eerie and atmospheric read! It has angst and tension, emotional insecurity of adolescence, dark and emotional themes, forest monsters, and a journey through destructive grief. It’s dark…really dark and really sad. I’m not going to forget this one.

*Firstly, thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

“It hadn’t hurt, the day he had cut out his own heart.”

When people talk about being lost in a book this what they mean. This book was so complex and beautifully written. From beginning to end I was so enamored by how the author described the setting. All of the descriptions and how complexly written the characters’ feelings were. I don’t know what else to say other than this book was stunning. Heart achingly so but stunning nonetheless.

“Other people existed only in Thomas’s peripheral, but the Perrault twins eclipsed his entire galaxy.
There was something intoxicating about meaning that much to one person.”

This is definitely a book I will read again and probably again.

This book was amazingly atmospheric. You really felt like you were right there with the characters. It is very gripping and everyone ya and up should check out this book.

This book is so unhinged and unabashedly gorey. It’ll have you second guessing everything— Andrew, the other students, yourself…by the end of this, you’ll want to avoid the trees and the secrets they keep.

Andrew’s point of view is truly a unique one, one that honestly took a minute for me to get used to. He’s a boy who lives and breathes in metaphors and once the plot started picking up pace, it became one of the novel’s many great strengths. How, much like the forest, you truly feel a part of him, right down to his very soul.

Don’t Let the Forest In is the perfect read for Halloween!! Love the monsters, love a good fucked up forest, love all the repressed queer yearning!

I enjoyed the atmosphere of the book. It was super dark and perfect for the season. It was a quick easy ya book. I would recommend to our local ya book club.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an Advanced Reading Copy. Don't Let the Forest In by CG Drews follows our main protagonist, Andrew, and his best friend Thomas as they fight the monsters invading their boarding school, seemingly appearing from the stories Andrew writes and the pictures Thomas draws.

The pros:
The book is heavy on atmosphere. There is an autumnal setting, and is a perfect read for the spooky season. I finished this around Halloween and it fit the vibe.
The descriptions of the horror and the monsters are very visceral, and invoke the type of feeling that I believe the author intended.
The "twist" was well-written into the story, and I think will surprise a lot of readers and lends itself well to re-reading the book and seeing if there was any missed foreshadowing.

The cons:
- I didn't ever really grow to feel any kind of connection with the characters. I'm not a reader that needs to have likable characters, but the ones in this ARC didn't feel developed enough for me to be invested enough in their stories.
- The story was heavy on vibes and a little light on plot/characters/believable dialogue for me.

Overall, this is a solidly gory and ghoulish horror that works well for the season. I like an open ending, and appreciated how some things weren't wrapped up at the end of the book, and I think there was a lot of promise for future books by this author - I would pick up the next one.

Lush prose perfect for fans of V.E. Schwab! This dreamlike book is like a long, lush poem about that tangle of longing and terror that is a first love and fear of loss.

From the moment Thomas bounced in between Dove and Andrew when they were 12, the trio has been inseparable. Dove, the confident, brilliant, bulwark of the group, keeps Andrew from falling to pieces mentally, scholastically, and socially, and he reigns in Thomas’ simmering antagonism and explosive temper. At the end of junior year, however, something fractures between Dove and Thomas, and with Dove silent and Thomas unreachable all summer, Andrew is in the dark. He keeps his panic at bay by assuring himself the two will make up and set right his capsized world. Yet, Dove eventually ices him out as well, and Thomas keeps secrets and pushes Andrew away.

Every night, Thomas sneaks out the window and comes back trailing dirt, exhaustion, and turmoil in his wake. Andrew can’t force his lifelines to intertwine, but he can follow Thomas. What he sees is the stuff of nightmares—a monstrous creature made of forest rot and imagination pulled straight from Thomas’ sketchpad.

Thomas has been fighting to keep his creations away from the school and his friends, but now the eldritch woods have tasted Andrew. Inside him is a pressure like being buried miles underground, the dirt a compacted and rotting mass of fear, rage, sorrow, and unspoken words the forest loosens and feeds upon. While the pair desperately try to stop the monsters from attacking the school, the forest slowly invades Andrew. With the threat growing and time running out, he and Thomas may save Wickwood Academy, but can they keep Andrew from being hollowed out?

Don’t Let the Forest In is a story of twisted fairytales, twisted emotions, and the monsters entangled within. It’s full of conflicted obsession, psychological distress, and ugliness grown from an all-consuming codependent love. The horrors that bloom from Wickwood’s forest plant roots into Thomas and Andrew’s lives to claim the bruised and bleeding hearts the boys have silently pledged to each other. The mystery of the hows, the whys, and the path to extermination pulls them along in a cloud of unreliability, repression, and despair. The writing is flowery, but those flowers are full of barbs that trapped me in Andrew’s world. Everything is glassy and sharp and its edges never dull. Andrew has no peace from himself, his bullies, or the forest. Even in scenes of normality, there is always an underlying tension. The boys’ terror and turmoil are tangible, and the metaphors and imagery are brutal and beautiful. The story has a dark academia vibe, and Andrew carries all that Gothic inside himself. From his first angst fueled words, I heard “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again” and his mind holds all the lush inner melodrama and discombobulation of narrators from Gothic classics, but with the overt harshness of modernity.

Andrew only feels stable and complete when locked behind Wickwood’s walls with Dove and Thomas. They blended their needs and personalities to create a comforting and unchanging circle, but it fed their worst impulses as well. Thomas is the almost feral fae-like boy who’s allowed to channel his riotous energy and volcanic emotions into his art and being Andrew’s rabidly protective prince instead of dealing with his suppressed trauma. Andrew attached his well-being to Dove, and eventually Thomas. They speak for him, take care of him, and shelter him. They let him lie, skirt unpleasant truths, and increase his insularity. Dove is a regal and rigid princess, their beloved shining star that keeps the boys from spiraling out of control. It’s a constant, thankless job and it may be more than her love that tethers her so deeply. Her drive for perfection can border on mania; being their center and needed so completely seems to grant her an essential amount of control. Together they are beautiful, but quietly dysfunctional, something that could not sustain beyond Wickwood. Without Dove and faced with insidious horrors, Andrew’s world is a chaotic mess, with the hurricane that is Thomas in the center.

Andrew has a very strong narrative voice and being in his head is intense. His brain is constantly firing bright pulses of discord that keep him tightly wound and pained. He is also isolated and non-confrontational to a detrimental degree—plugging his ears, hiding in pantries, or zoning out and telling himself stories until people go away. It keeps him blind to the cause of Dove and Thomas’s fight and adds fuel to the uncertain and treacherous situation. His inability to cope is so severe his panic is always just under the surface, and he hides from everything, especially his feelings, asexuality, and love for Thomas. He wants him, but wants things to stay the same. He wants Thomas to love him, but fears Thomas’s love and sexuality. Andrew’s thoughts are obsessive and circular, and he’s tormented by his inability to speak his words instead of hiding them in metaphor on a page.

His exterior is that of a cowed animal, but even cowed animals bite, and Andrew’s inner bite is vicious and vindictive. Its teeth are his underlying anguish and fury at himself—for being the weak twin, for being unable to fight his own battles, for being unable to deal just once. He can only be glorious and strong in his pain-filled crevices. He is a cancerous mass of insecurity, sexual confusion, and a bitter selfishness. It all coalesces into a black sludge he partially expels in his cruel macabre stories. Dove loves them, but doesn’t understand them. Thomas does and loves their darkness. He sees the inky abyss with its terrible and strong roots underneath Andrew’s anxiousness, and loves it because it’s part of Andrew. Thomas cherishes Andrew’s nightmares and makes them a morbidly beautiful connection between them that the monsters greedily consume.

With the uncertainty built into the tale, there is some unevenness and a feeling of suddenly being jerked into different situations and head spaces; actions, emotions, and/or information within a scene don’t always mesh or feel related. The writing is very evocative, but can be overwrought and singularly focused on describing Thomas, and Andrew’s continued ignorance about the rift relies heavily on vague and/or cut-off sentences. However, I think Drews makes the trope believable. I also think the jagged areas, inconsistencies, and Andrew’s brooding and redundant fixation on Thomas are integral to the atmosphere and story. Andrew’s focus on Thomas is a function of his tortured, artistic soul, and it’s also not only about Thomas. Thomas is the avatar of Andrew’s fear of himself, love, and change, and of his dueling desires to move forward and stand still.

Don’t Let the Forest In is a dark and haunted exploration of love’s power and how ruinous it can be to oneself and to the ones loved. It’s about shattered glass and creating truth from the broken shards. It’s about where and how far the hidden depths within heartbreak, loss, and survival can take someone and the toll of carving out a life from the aftermath. In the words of the author, “If you’ve turned the last page and are now frowning at the wall, then everything is as it should be.”

Just ok. More eerie and confusing than spooky and mysterious. Not really my vibe.
I think my issue was with the main character who was just a little too obsessive for my taste.

5 ⭐️ oh my GOD. i am not exaggerating when i say that this book is going to HAUNT me (in the best possible way) — holy god above i am gonna need months to process this.

i am a little late in this arc review but i could not have stopped reading it if you paid me. absolutely RIP my sleep schedule.

c.g. drews has a haunting, beautiful, evocative way of writing that evokes ancient ballads. the tension started building and building and at no point was i ready for what happened next. the balance of the monsters against the gothic, dark-academia setting was perfection. andrew and thomas are absolute disasters, completely shattered and broken but so tragically in love that it truly transcends anything i can put into words.

this is psychological horror and an unreliable narrator and beautiful, painful, twisted love written the best. it was creepy, ominous, haunting, and macabre but also so beautifully, heart-breaking lovely. this book deserves every single accolade and 5 star review and more. frame it and put it in the louvre, the met, the smithsonian, everywhere.

thank you netgalley for this arc — and because i bought my own hard copy, everyone needs to get the beautiful barnes & noble edition with the artwork, absolutely STUNNING.

c.g. drews — thank you for absolutely wrecking me with your book. it was an honor to be ripped to shreds by your work.

<i>"I don't care how dark the world gets for you. I'll hold out my hand until you find it, and I won't let go."<i>

How do I even begin to describe how AMAZING this book was. It was everything I could have hoped for in a dark cottagecore horror. Each snippet of dark, twisted fairytales had me obsessed because it reminded me of writing as a child with severe anxiety issues. Andrew's mind was so relatable and disturbing at the same time. If I could crawl into this book and never come out, I positively would. I lost myself in the writing and story building just like Andrew lost himself in the forest.
The greatest part of this whole novel for me was the slow burning but fantastic love story between Andrew and his best friend Thomas. These two were every bit as obsessed with each other as the other one was. The way they held together the whole book, bloodied and slightly insane, is everything I wanted. In the foreseeable future you may find me crying over my new ship, drawing fanart in an attempt to feel like Thomas, and writing fanfiction late into the night to honor my dear Andrew. If memes, fanarts, and fanfictions do not release for this book soon I will wither away quicker than Andrew's ability to stay sane.
Speaking of staying sane... WHAT was that ending? How do I even begin to process that kind of information. It was plot twist after plot twist for several pages. Maybe some of you readers saw it coming, but I did not. It was thrilling.
I very kindly received this book through Netgalley, so a big thank you to the author, publishers, marketers, etc, who made it possible for me to hold this deliciously moody book in my kindle.

5/5 stars
0/5 spice (but you'll love it)