The Hazel Wood

This book was CREEPY, but also so vividly written, and so strange, that I couldn't put it down. It sort of reminded me of how the Disney fairytales we are told now are just more polished versions of much darker, more disturbing tales. This book unflinching brings fairytales that are disturbing, not dainty, to life, and lets us watch in horror as they slowly bleed into our world.

A book does not need to be perfect for me to like it, I tend to be drawn more towards originality and ambition. And, if the project sometimes collapses under the weight of that ambition, at least it attempted to reach for the stars, hopefully firing off a wealth of interesting ideas as it falls to earth.

'The Hazel Wood' is a flawed but unforgettable slice of magic realism, seemingly influence by Angela Carter and Marina Warner, possibly aimed at the young adult market but not exclusively so. Late teen Alice lives a troubled, nomadic existence with her mother. She… show more.

I read The Hazel Wood while writing my own book, and the vibe immediately struck me as similar. It takes the protagonist, Alice, on a journey between our world and a world of dark, original fairytales, where stories are the very fabric of the universe. The more entangled the story becomes in the fairytale world, the more the book itself reads like one...it feels like a dream, with events unfolding unpredictably as we learn the rules of the new world and what the characters from it want. 

What would happen if a fairy tale world spilled over into the real world? Seventeen-year-old Alice gets the answer when she discovers that a book of fairytales her grandmother wrote decades ago might be more than just a book of stories. When her mother is kidnapped by agents of the mysterious Hinterland, Alice must travel with a school friend to The Hazel Wood (her grandmother’s mysterious estate) to rescue her. Exploring themes of family and breaking free of the constraints of one’s lineage, The Hazel Wood is the type of modern fable lovers of fairytales will love to sink their… show more.