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. (via Goodreads)

I received an eARC from the publisher courtesy of Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

The Hazel Wood really surprised me in a lot of ways. I went into it expecting a typical fairytale, and to an extent I got it, but there was also so much more to this book than I was expecting.

I read this on my Kindle in two sittings and really, really loved it. It’s a little bit Grimm, a little bit fanciful, and a whole lot of a great story. If you were a fan of stories like Naomi Novik’s Uprooted or Tell Tale’s The Wolf Among Us, this is probably a good book for you.

There’s one quote that I loved from very near the end of the book.

“I made a whole world just for you, and in it you get to do what nobody gets to: you get to live, and live, and live. And everything will come out the way it’s supposed to, no matter what.”

If this sounds up your alley, check it out on Amazon or Indiebound!

Disclaimer: All links to Indiebound and Amazon are affiliate links, which means that if you buy through those links, I will make a small amount of money off of it.