Book #86 The Hazel Wood

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This has confirmed that I should be more circumspect in the ARCs I accept to read. The Hazel Wood was not for me. Unfathomable, well almost. Is this a dark fairy story, a story within a fairy story, is it supernatural, is it ”an unfathomable vastness, like lentils scattered through ashes”?

I can say it’s about seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother Ella, spending life on the road, no permanent abode, habitually having to avoid bad luck - until Ella is taken - to the Hazel Wood, the Hinterland? The abode of Alice’s recently deceased grandmother, author of supernatural fairy stories, Tales from The Hinterland. Her mother leaves behind a message for Alice: Stay away from the Hazel Wood. But, like a magnet, the Hazel Wood pulls Alice into a nightmare world of dark characters and monsters, stories within stories, as Alice seeks her mother. It’s all rather bewildering.

One character says to Alice: ”The quickest way to end this is to begin it, and that’s no way to start, is it?” Well, I rather wish I hadn’t. I struggled to finish The Hazel Wood, almost abandoned it, several times. Not my cup of tea at all.

I must still thank NetGalley and Penguin Random House for the opportunity to read this ARC.

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