Book review: The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Meet your new addiction. The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert will cast an immediate spell on you and keep you awake long into the night frantically turning pages. This suspenseful, pitch-black, twisted fairy tale hits bookstores January 30 and will no doubt land on a lot of ‘best of’ lists for 2018 by the end of the year. A movie adaptation is reportedly already in the works. Go buy a copy the day it comes out, read it, and pass it around. You can thank me later.

Alice and her mom Ella have been on the run for as long as Alice can remember. Alice has never met her grandmother, Althea Proserpine, who was briefly a famous author and has now retreated to the her estate in north woods of New York called The Hazel Wood. Althea’s book Tales from the Hinterland became a cult classic that is now virtually impossible to find, or way too expensive to purchase when a copy emerges. Strange stories abound about bad luck regarding those who have read the stories or who own the books.

When Alice and her mom get a letter saying that Althea has died, Ella thinks their days of running are over. Alice, now 17, has only been dimly aware of what exactly they’ve been running from. Then Ella disappears, and Alice fears that it’s either the strange and obsessive Hinterland fans who are responsible, or worse, characters from The Hinterland itself.

Alice enlists the help of classmate and Hinterland fan Ellery Finch, who helps Alice piece together the few clues she has. Ellery is very willing to help Alice, especially when all trails point to a visit to The Hazel Wood, a place every true fan of Tales from the Hinterland wants to go.

Author Melissa Albert expertly weaves fragments of Althea’s twisted fairy tales into Alice’s reality, and all of it is terrifyingly familiar and realistic. These fairy tales not only have teeth, they are infectious and get under your skin. Albert’s prose is literary, lilting, and addictive. This is a tale that you can’t leave behind even once you’ve finished it; it resonates long after the last page. While there have been plenty of YA books that rework old fairy tales, Albert has taken the fairy realm and deconstructed it. There are no princes coming to the rescue, and no happily ever afters in this dark tale. But there is some form of redemption in Alice’s strength to fight her own battles and use her own grit to rewrite her future.

I plan to buy several of these for the library in various formats (print, ebook, e-audio book), and fully expect to add additional copies as this novel explodes into the YA world. Go buy yourself a copy and pass it around. You’ll love it, and your friends will think you’re the most awesome reader ever for passing it on to them.