Welcome to Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood–the fiercely stunning New York Times bestseller everyone is raving about! Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, … fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away–by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother’s stories are set. Alice’s only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”
Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother’s tales began–and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.
Don’t miss the New York Times bestselling sequel to The Hazel Wood, The Night Country, out now, or Tales from the Hinterland, coming January 12, 2021!
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I enjoyed reading the book though I was expecting a book suitable for teens. The language, in my opinion, is not. I loved the main character, Alice, and her friend Ellery Finch, but he disappeared too quickly and unexpectedly. I wanted him to be part of the story! In the end, I was disappointed.
A unusual yet beautifully written story. Several paragraphs are the most beautiful prose or strangely whimsical. A page-turner to reveal the puzzle
I loved this book , well written and unexpected.
This is an amazing fantasy story with a twisting plot, a well built world and fascinating characters.
So where do I start with this one? Normally I’m all excited when I finish a book, giddy with excitement to share my feelings over the story I just read.
But this book left me with a hollow feeling, because this wasn’t your typical happy-ever-after. Or rather, lets take that happy right out of there. This was bitter-sweet and down right, hollow. And I loved it!
Everything is this book was planned out to connect, right from when we’re first introduced to Alice and Ella. Alice isn’t you typical MC, she rude, mean, and a little bit crazy. She doesn’t give a flying fuck, and most all she has this ability to make others crazy just by starring them down. If it wasn’t for Ella she would have been admitted years ago.
I can see where some people would not like this type of character, or fell like thay can’t connect. Most YA MCs are the shy, closet beautiful girl, that’s too sweet and caring for their own good. That is not Alice, she even brings it up herself, that she doesn’t feel.. right. That antagonist like profile made Alice, to me, special and enjoyable.
I highly recommend you read this twisted tale full of bloody stories that are anything but a pretty fairy tales.
Happy Reading
-E.A.Walsh
This book has so so much potential! I feel this was either a love or hate it book too… although I didn’t hate it, I didnt really enjoy the ending either. It felt like the first half of the book was very well thought out, and written but then towards the end it felt rushed. It definitely had a story line I havent read before which is why it was so high up on my must read. Honestly I say read it. I did enjoy it just lost some stars for being a rushed ending (to me!)
Alice and her mother were always a step ahead of bad luck until one day it caught up to them. Living in New York, Alice’s mother had married a wealthy man and seemed to have stopped believe in their bad luck. Working in a coffee shop, Alice see’s a familiar face from her childhood. A man who had kidnapped her to take her back to her grandmother, a famous author of dark fairy tales, at her home in the Hazel Wood. When she spots this man, he doesn’t look a day older than he did ten years ago, so she doesn’t believe her instincts. When she gets home and finds her mother has been kidnapped by the people they had been running from, Alice has to find her grandmother’s estate, hoping that is where her mother is being taken.
This is a story of adventure and self discovery for Alice and like the dark fairy tale’s her grandmother wrote, her journey also follows a dark path. As I started reading The Hazel Wood I loved the world that Melissa Albert had created. Alice, like Alice in Wonderland, seemed to have fallen down a dark hole and as Alice and I learned more about the fairy tale’s that her grandmother wrote it became hard to second guess where the story was leading. When Alice got to the Hazel Wood and her existence was revealed I’ll admit that it became harder for me to like. This was not a Disneyland fairy tale and even though there was a happy ending I didn’t feel very happy at the end. I had mixed feelings about this novel. The writing was excellent and it was a unique story but in the end I felt “meh”.
I will never trust a beautiful cover again.
This was… hard to get through. I guessed most of the “twists” right away. However, Alice, the main character, was my main problem with this book. The only colored character had incredibly realistic concerns about the racism he faces, and Alice completely told him off by saying that he’s rich and has “privileges.” Also, while she was supposed to come off as determined, she was actually just stubborn in all the wrong ways. The plot took too long to get to the point, the use of swear words was unnerving, and the whole book felt like a huge disappointment after all of the hype. The ending felt weirdly tacked on like an afterthought.