Review: The Hazel Wood

I had been on a string of reading really good books, including another recent YA fantasy release that I really enjoyed, and was worried that this much-anticipated novel might just get swept up in the tide. However, not only did it end up making an impact all its own, but it soared above and beyond my expectations. 

Basically, you know when you were a kid, and you were reading, and your mom called you away to do some chore, and you had to wrench your brain away from the book like you were emerging from a century-long nap? 

Without being too extra, this book made me feel like that. 

The Hazel Wood, by Melissa Albert, follows Alice, a teenage girl raised in constant motion, in order to outrun the misfortune that dogs her every step. When danger seems to catch up with her and her mother once more in New York, she knows she has to stop running, once and for all, and confront the past their small family was trying to avoid. Alice can only chart her own story, by finding what laid at the center of another one, so many years ago, in her grandmother's best-selling book of fairy tales... one she's never been allowed to read. But these tales aren't filled with "happily ever after"s, and as the search for her missing mother grows more dire, Alice isn't quite sure if she's going to find one for herself, either.

This novel is a much-hyped recent release that I was incredibly pleased to find not only lived up to the amount of positive reviews surrounding it, but exceeded it beyond my wildest expectations. It had some big shoes to fill, too: I read it right on the tails of The Cruel Prince, and was uncertain about reading two YA releases involving strong fantasy elements back to back. However, not only were they both different, but they were each made stronger by what made them different.

The Hazel Wood is dark... and I don't just mean that in a YA way, but in a literature-in-general kind of way. It carries a body count... brutality and bloodshed abound, even when packed within the confines of a fantasy-style atmosphere, and packaged with a teen female protagonist. Cruel Prince boasts a different kind of brutality, one colored by the bright and shiny wrappings of high fantasy and faerie courts, but Alice lives in New York, works at a cafe, and hates her high school. The drama comes from watching her real-world outlook cope with the introduction of deadly raven-calling nightmare women, disappearing books and reappearing trouble, and a forest in the middle of New York whose trees know more than they should.

The plot twists were shocking and sudden, and I loved them. Some were nearly gasp-worthy with their bloodshed or horror, while others brought about hope or clarity in such a stunning way that it actually made me smile. This book continued to surprise me at every corner, which is something I didn't think the YA fantasy genre could pull on me any more.

[It actually reminded me a lot - A LOT - of John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things, not only for its focus on traditionalist (ie, Not Disney-fied, very much violent and unrepentant) plots of original fairy tales, but for how deeply woven the intersections of the fantasy world and the real world swirled together. There are so many similarities between the two reads, I feel completely confident in recommending each to fans of the other.]

Not only is the writing a little more on the intense side, but the writing style operates at a higher level of YA, as well: compelling syntax and sentence flow, a high level of diction, and well-constructed and paced metaphorical content, spell this book out as being written by someone who is just plain good at writing! To be honest, I think the gorgeously wrought descriptions are the backbone of the narrative itself: Melissa Albert clearly knows how to make things sound elegant and interesting. The metaphorical descriptions alone deserve some kind of medal, because there were frequent uses of simile that made me reread segments over and over in order to appreciate it more fully, like I used to feel when I read Scott Westerfield's So Yesterday as a kid.

The Goodreads profile for this book marks it as being the first in a series, and I'm not entirely sure how confident I am in that decision. This story would have been absolutely beautiful as a standalone, but due to how deeply I fell in love with Albert's writing style and compelling characters, I trust her to make that decision, and I look forward to reading more of her writing in the future.

Final Verdict: Dark, brutal, and expertly written, The Hazel Wood is a definite recommendation for those who like their fantasy a little more on the twisted side, like John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things or Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway. Don't be put off by the contemporary setting; the book is at its best when paying homage to the horror born from original folklore tradition. The best fairy tales were always warnings, after all.

What's your favorite YA release of the past year? Do you like books that come with their own fictional source material? Let me know, in the comments below!