Friday 9 February 2018

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert


Synopsis:

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, 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.

My review:

This book is a perfect mix of modern world and dark fairy tales that have somehow gone missing form our busy lives. If you look at the history of fairy tales most of them started out full of death and darkness and shadows and over time became the nice, good-wins-against-evil type that we know and love today.

The Hazel Wood goes back to those shadowy roots. Alice thinks she’s just a normal girl, growing up with bad luck following her and her mum Ella around. But when her mum gets kidnapped and a page from her estranged grandmother’s book of fairy tales is left behind as a message to Alice; things go from bad to worse pretty quickly.

Armed with the only nearly-friend she has, they set out on a dangerous road to find the Hazel Wood as Alice believes that’s where her mother was taken. But on this journey her whole world is turned up-side-down and Alice finds herself right in the middle of one those tales that her mother has tried so hard to keep from her.

It’s a fabulous, exciting book, with hints of magic and good old-fashioned Grimm-like tales.

Thank you very much to the author and NetGalley for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review.

My rating: 5/5

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