I’m sorry but this was just such a mess. It really wanted to be house of hollow but it couldn’t get a solid plot going at all. The twist at the end didn’t feel believable given the storyline. And the main character was just SO WHINY. Were it not short simple language i do not think i could have finished.

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Childrens Publishing Group for this ARC!

Let me start by saying I don't think my words will do this story enough justice. That being said, I will risk being dramatic and say I don't think five stars is enough for this book. The things the author was able to accomplish in 336 pages are incredible. I don't think I have ever felt more hollowed out and empty (in the best way possible) than I did when I finished this book. I closed my Kindle and stared at the wall for a solid five minutes before opening my Kindle once again and making sure I read that ending correctly. It has easily skyrocketed to my top read in 2024 and might even take the spot for my favorite book I have ever read. I loved the ace and LGBT representation in this book! Every character was so well-thought-out, and you could tell so much thought had gone into mapping it all out. I was so attached to each one of them through the book. The pacing in this book was incredible and built up so much suspense and anxiety. All in all, if you are a fan of horror or suspense, I highly encourage you to pick up this book. It will be with me for a long while yet.

The very end of this book punched out my ribs and hurt all of my feelings. But worry not, I enjoyed the ride.

Don't Let the Forest In is BEAUTIFUL. From the front cover to the very last page there is something to admire, something that just sits with you and allows these boys with their deep passion and their wild forest full of monsters to live inside your mind.

I did not want this book to end.

The language is beautiful, the descriptions colorful, gory, terrifying. I could see Wickwood, I could see Andrew and Thomas and all of the monsters and the rot and the decay. This is the first time I've ever highlighted things in a book to return to because there were certain lines that I wanted to come back to and read again.

<i>"But his ribs were a cage for monsters and they cut their teeth on his bones."

"What were twins, if not one to shout and one to whisper?"

"The monsters knew how weak these boys were and they found it delightful."</i>

This book captured me from the very beginning, kept me hooked through and then broke my heart at the end.

But what is this book about?

Andrew Perrault returns to Wickwood Academy after a rough year and an all too quiet summer. He thrives at Wickwood, not because of the school itself but because that is where he is reunited with his best friend Thomas Rye who, together with Andrew's twin sister Dove, completes the perfect trio of friendship. But this year Dove is giving them both the cold shoulder and Andrew doesn't really understand why. Thomas, beautiful and wild and made up of charcoal and paint, seems a little distant too but once returned to his side Andrew feels he's right where he belongs (nevermind that he is absolutely and passionately in love with his best friend despite his own asexuality).

But something is different. Something is wicked and rotten and it's creeping in from the edges of the forest and Andrew can't ignore that Thomas is hiding something from him.

So when he goes to discover what it is and finds Thomas in the forest fighting monsters that have crept out of his drawings Andrew's world changes. The monsters seem to hunger for something - can the boys sate it before the forest consumes everything and everyone?

Don't Let The Forest In is what happens when love and grief come to life with ink and blood.

Please read this book, even if it hurts your feelings because it hurts so good.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley, who provided an ARC of this book for my honest review.

This book was haunting and chaotic and overwhelming and heartbreaking. It's definitely a psychological forest horror novel. I love the characters and representation in the book of the various characters in the LGBTQIA community and the various mental health issues included in the book. The main character is ace, which is really great to see, as that isn't represented much. I felt it was a very raw and emotional snapshot into the character and the struggles of his identity and mental health.

The imagery was intense in the book and very vivid. There was so much going on and so many emotions in this book that it felt very overwhelming the entire time, but in a mostly intentional way. I think my brow was furrowed the entire time, and per the authors note at the end, if you finish the book frowning at the wall, all is as it should be.

There is a lot to think about and unpack with this one. Would be great to sit on and really absorb for a while after reading and then to have a book club discussion on. I really enjoyed this book and think it will be on my mind for a long while. 4.5/5

Atmospheric, creative and most importantly, very gay. Thank you Netgalley for the arc. This book was right up my alley and was interesting

Wow…. This book might honestly be one of my favorite books ever!

"his ribs were a cage for monsters, and they cut their teeth on his bones." The macabre setting, heartful romance, and exquisite writing were the best I've seen in a while, with utterly to-die-for characters and storyline.

So the story starts with Andrew, an awkward and quirky kid, who returns to Wickwood Academy with his twin sister, Dove. But, when Dove starts to avoid Andrew, Thomas, the rebellious and troubled best friend of the two twins, becomes Andrew's entire universe. Andrew, unable to stand Thomas distancing himself from him too, begins questioning his friend about his mysterious disappearances into the woods. But as further strain grows between the two, something entirely different begins to rise to the surface, something they both have kept locked in their monstrous drawings and stories for far too long.

I loved the romance between Thomas and Andrew; these two made me feel as if my heart was in my throat—such a great representation of a diverse community that is often undermined in literature.

I would also like to congratulate the author on their beautiful writing, and I will buy another copy when this book comes out. Don't Let the Forest In is a definite must-read!

Thanks so much, Macmillan Children's Publishing Group and NetGalley, for this ARC. Now, a favorite book of mine!

Don’t Let The Forest In is one of the BEST YA novels I’ve probably ever read. I finished it last night and have told everyone and anyone who will listen to me about it. Just….damn.

DLTFI is a dark academia, queer psychological thriller/horror about Andrew, his twin sister Dove and his best friend Thomas. Andrew writes gorgeously haunting fairy tales, while Thomas brings them to life (quite literally) with his creepy and enthralling art.

“You’ll cut me open and find a garden of rot where my heart should be.” Andrew let the silence sharpen between them, waited until Thomas’s breath caught in quiet anguish from being made to wait. “When I cut you open,” Andrew finally said, “all I’ll find is that we match.”

The start of their senior year comes with overwhelming anxiety, monsters crawling out of their stories from the forest hell bent on getting the sacrifice they demand and a growing tension between Andrew and Thomas. Andrew is struggling to grapple with his sister cutting him off, his growing feelings for Thomas and coming to terms with his asexuality and what that means for him.

“You could cut me open and devour everything that I am,” Thomas said, ragged and thin. “I would let you. I’d ask you to.

The asexuality representation in this book is absolutely top notch. Many books try and fail to portray characters along the sexuality spectrum and either come up short or miss the mark altogether. DLTFI handles Andrew’s sexuality with grace and care, giving him room to question, understand and ultimately accept who he is.

This book is also overwhelmingly about grief and anxiety and what that does to a person. Loss comes in many forms and the way that the topic was approached and discussed in DLTFI was tender and almost frighteningly real. I felt everything these characters felt right along with them.

“To write something nice, he’d need something nice to say. But his ribs were a cage for monsters and they cut their teeth on his bones.”

Now let’s get to my absolute favorite part and something I think might be slightly polarizing. The writing of this novel was BEAUTIFUL. Absolutely gorgeous, lyrical and highly atmospheric. How else could a story about fairy tales be written? It fit the subject and characters so well and made you feel like you’re trapped in the twisted reality right there alongside them.

“For a vicious moment, Andrew thought about slipping his fingers into Thomas’s cut. Taking hold of his rib and breaking it. Pulling the soft crumbling bone from his chest and sewing it into his own. They’d be forever together, rib against rib, fused in gore and bone and adoration.”

All in all this novel was incredible and I highly highly recommend!

Thank you to netgalley for the opportunity to read and review early!

Amazing!! I had a feeling this was going to be good from the synopsis but I didn’t think it would be THIS GOOD! I will think about this one for a long time. It will haunt me forever.
The writing is beautiful and descriptive. The friendship and love is just amazing. I love the representation of sexuality and mental health. I felt like I was in the school, running through the forest with these boys. I’m sad it’s over.

Thomas, and the twins Dove and Andrew, are close. Their whole summer is spent waiting to get back to the private school they all attend to be with each other again.
However, something is different this semester. Andrew has severe scars on his hand, Dove and Thomas aren’t speaking and everyone at school is told to not go into the forest surrounding the school or they will be expelled. The forest is hiding secrets and what’s there could destroy them all.

This is If We Were Villians/ These Violent Delights for beginners. Beautifully written and a wonderful love letter to fairy tales but the characters fell a little flat to me and because of that the plot twist really didn’t make me feel anything in the end.

I instantly texted a fellow ace bookseller about this book because a disaster, anxious asexual teenager dealing with Forest Horrors is so exactly what we would have wanted in high school that it almost made me want to cry. This is a DARK story with the type of heavy trigger warnings that I definitely would mention when handselling, but I found it so cathartic and so deeply emotionally propulsive that even the tiny nitpicks I had (how on earth did the school let this happen??? how did Andrew not put certain pieces about his involvement in the magic together sooner?) felt irrelevant.

I loved this. I will make my store buy this. I want more than anything to find the angsty mess who needs this book and shove it into their hands.

at the end of the book, in the acknowledgements the author finishes by saying “may this one haunt you” and i think it’s safe to say it will. i might get crucified for this, but i will tentatively recommend this one to people that enjoyed “these violent delights” by micah nemerever or “the wicker king” bt k. ancrum because they give me similar vibes - codependency, toxic characters, absolutely unhinged plot twists.

i had absolutely no expectations going into this book, as i requested the arc on a whim because pretty cover = sold, but jesus, it was such a pleasent experience to read it. i stayed up to try and finish the novel, but i had stuff to do the next day, so i was forced to finish it in 2 days, otherwise i think this would’ve been one of those read-in-one-go type of book for me. i was kind of impressed it managed to get me out of this reading slump i’ve been fighting, because lately no book managed to keep my attention for more than 15 minutes at a time.

the writing was great, very poetic and full of metaphors. i can see some people complain about it being a bit too purple-prose-y, but i think it’s just the right amout to fit the main character’s state of mind and the atmosphere of the story. i this the writing style was perfectly used as a tool to subtly note andrew’s deteriorating mental health. i also liked how the action scenes were written, i think they weren’t rushed at all. the atmosphere was very creepy at times - i had parts where i was kinda uncomfortable reading, which is absolutely amazing because not many books are able to do that.

the characters were fleshed-out and the relationships between them were well explored. being in andrew’s head and watching him slowly losing his grasp on what’s real and what’s not was interesting to follow along. i wish we would’ve gotten to see his relationship with his twin sister, dove, a bit more, but it’s not that big of a deal. i liked both thomas and andrew and their dynamics quite a lot.

the setting of the book is quite limited, but i think that works out amazingly with the story because it feels claustrophobic. we’re confined to the forest and the campus and neither places are safe for the characters, so everyone is constanly looking out for themselves, therefore the readers are forced to be alert as well. i liked how the forest was described and the actions scenes in which they fight monsters were insanely fun to read as well. we got vivid descriptions of each monster.

i also liked how andrew’s asexuality was handled - it’s nice to see the rep in books, especially since it’s not very talked about usually. there’s also themes of grief and what that can do to someone, but i don’t want to give any spoilers.

overall, “don’t let the forest in” is a really good YA horror, perfect for those that like psychological themes in their horror. the writing was amazing and i liked how eerie the atmosphere was at all times. i’m looking forward to the author’s future works and i hope they will continue publishing horror novels, because this one was well done.

"But his ribs were a cage for monsters and they cut their teeth on his bones."

I don't quite have the words to really explain how deep into my soul this book got. But in quite certain it's going to live there for a very, very long time.

The writing is just exquisite, while at the exact same time the story being told is full of horror and violence and things of nightmares. It takes an extremely talented author to be able to create this type of world that feels so dark and yet so welcoming.

CG Drews is a brilliant and gifted storyteller, and I cannot wait until the next time I'm lucky enough to once again journey into their dark mind and stories 🖤

Thanks so much to NetGalley, CG Drews, and Macmillan for the chance to review this A C of Don't Let the Forest In.

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

While this book had some interesting ideas, I felt pretty removed from it. The scary scenes didn't creep me out, and I never was able to get invested in the relationship between the main characters. I had such high hopes for it, but ultimately it felt very cold. I know some people are going to love this, but after reading books like She is a Haunting, Together We Rot, or Your Blood My Bones, this just didn't live up to expectations.

4.5 Stars

This book is beautiful. The writing is beautiful and dark and so heart-wrenching. I loved the exploration of sexuality, romance, and grief; how the power of grief is just as magical as the power of love. Seeing Andrew and Thomas spiral through this world of gothic and fantastical horror was really moving.

I wanted this to be a 5-star so badly, but it lost me a little bit in the middle. I think it was mostly that once the plot got started, it never let up and was brutal. I wanted just a few more quiet moments, where we could see the relationships before reality shattered would have pushed this into a perfect book for me.

This book embodies the quote "Reality is what exists when you stop believing in it."

This book is so gorgeously written it almost hurts. The beauty of it is undeniable, but there's a lingering sense of danger, of harm, that gives it a bite that can't be ignored.

3.8

First off this cover is beautiful.
Second this was definitely a good YA horror read. Although slightly easy to predict what was happening it still flowed so well and made this easy to read within a days span.

I was extremely excited to read this book: queer, YA, horror/psychological horror, not to mention the stunning cover art by Jana Heidersdorf & design by Meg Sayre! Alas, my excitement about these things was short-lived. Spoiler Warning!

I understand that my low rating seems to be in the minority of those who have also read the arc or heard about the book and are excited about its release. But I have reasons!

The element I was most excited for: LGBTQIA+ Rep!
I loved the inclusion of the school's GSA, and Lana and Chloe were hands down my favorite characters, but when it came to the MMC Andrew, it seemed forced. Not only was the relationship between Thomas and Andrew DEEPLY codependent and unhealthy, but Andrew's struggle with his identity and eventual labeling of said identity felt like nothing more than a plot device to fuel a fight between them. I felt so let down as a queer reader. Not to mention making Bryce a homophobe as if he weren't enough of a terrible person. Ugh.

The Horror
The Plus: the book contains a content warning (blood/gore, body horror, panic attacks, grief, eating disorder, bullying, and self-harm).
And, while the book is creepy and unnerving, nothing too extreme happens until chapter 17 and it seems to very suddenly get a bit violent. I don't think the psychological horror aspect was very well-rounded until the end of the book (which felt very similar to Mona Awad's book Bunny). It felt like the "show, don't tell" writing rule was allowed to run rampant, confusing me in some places where the action or emotions were high in the book. I do, however, believe that the action pieces with the monsters and Thomas and the parts with Dove would do so well in film and make the point much more apparent.

The Good
However I feel about the book, I LOVE it when fairy tales are incorporated into fiction! I loved the pieces of Andrew's dark fairy tales that were interspersed, which made my connection to the story much more substantial as a reader.

And finally...

A big thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for the ARC!

A beautiful, haunting story of two boys fighting monsters, literally and those that live inside themselves.
Andrew, Thomas, and Dove attend an elite private boarding school, they have been best friends since they were 12, and are now in their senior year. The friends try to navigate through the school year while dealing with bullies, confusion as to who they are, and the monsters trying to devour them.

4.5
I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was so unsettlingly beautiful and heartbreakingly genuine. You feel the characters aches and needs. The writing is dark, graceful and it timidly walks you through weakness. Through the grief and loss of these characters as they venture through their school and through the void of the woods that haunts them. This book completely surprised me with how much I couldn't put it down.