The Hazel Wood: A Novel (The Hazel Wood, 1)
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, 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 bestselling sequel to The Hazel Wood, The Night Country or the illustrated collection of twelve fairy tales, Tales from the Hinterland!
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Community Reviews
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There is some strong language and violence in this book.
I expected Holly Black (in fact, I kept thinking this book was written by Holly Black... my apologies to all involved) and I got something similar but almost weirder.
I got this book in a book box subscription. I'd also seen it a couple of times in a cute (albeit expensive) local bookshop in my hometown and had put it on my want-to-read list. But I don't think I really took the time to figure out what it was about.
This was fantasy but on dark drugs. I was going to stay steroids, but these are the drugs that lead you down dark alleyways, beat you up a little bit, you have a defining, profound epiphany, and then hopefully you crawl out of it before dawn to live another day. The story revolves around Alice and her mother Ella, and Ella's mother, Althea Proserpine.
Althea Proserpine is a reclusive author who lives on an enigmatic estate called "The Hazel Wood" because don't you also miss the time when fancy people lived in houses that received grand names? I do. I should name my house. Anyhow, Althea Proserpine wrote a single book and it passed into something more than cult status. You can't find the book; a movie made of it went horribly awry and you can't find copies of that, either. Few to no details are known about the Hazel Wood or the author's life. There's a gap in her biography from 1966 to 1969. And she's Alice's grandmother.
Alice, who spends her life reading and moving from place to place with her mother before bad luck can catch up to them. Her mother, who has all the best intentions but always comes off as one of those mothers who doesn't really know how to mother properly; always a little too young, always a little too irresponsible. They are continuously moving to avoid the bad luck that follows them. Finally, they get word of Althea's death and think the bad luck will stop following them. They try to settle down.
They can't.
I really don't want to say any more because beyond the point of the bad luck catches back up with them, the beautiful thing about this novel is how it leads you deeper and deeper into the web of the bizarre and fantastical. I would put this book down and just itch to pick it back up. I just had to know what was going to happen next. It took so many turns I didn't really expect and it led me down such a winding path. It made me sympathize with the protagonist because the book itself felt like the path she was taking. I haven't read a book quite like that since I read The Trial by Franz Kafka.
My only real criticism is that occasionally the references or swear words would take me out of the total fantasy realm in which I felt immersed. It was a little like in every Percy Jackson novel where things are maybe going to get a little serious and he makes a bathroom joke. Obviously not that bad (what is?) but it was still a little distracting. I don't need prim and proper protagonists, not by a long shot, but what with the rest of the tone it just took me out of it a little. I am also a little saddened by the fact that on this website it says "The Hazel Wood, #1". I am so tired of series. I wish sometimes that books were just singular books and didn't have extensive, unwieldy series in the works behind them. I like this author and I liked this book, but I don't want to go back. I just want it to be itself, alone and singular. Thank you.
Anyhow, read this book if you like fairy tales but also that slight sense of unease when you see something not quite right.
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