The Hazel Wood

This book had been one I'd been saving for myself for some time. I'd heard wonderful things about it and I hoped that it's promised tale of magical fairy tales and a mysterious house called The Hazel Wood would give me a great fantasy tale to lose myself in. I was, unfortunately, going to be disappointed.

This book firstly was just not full of characters I fell in love with, set in contemporary New York setting we follow Alice, a young girl of seventeen whose grandmother has just passed away. Her mother disappears and she is then told that she must stay away from The Hazel Wood. The Hazel Wood is the estate of her deceased grandmother where she lived as a recluse for much of her life, having written a book full of dark and mysterious fairy tales.

I could not click with any of the characters in this novel. They were all written quite superficially and as a result, we never really scratch the surface of their emotions. Alice is quite one dimensional and also we have so many characters coming in and out of the story so quickly that we fail to bond with any.

I DNF'd this one at around 50% of the way through as by this point we hadn't even reached the mysterious Hazel Wood and I was losing the will to live with this book. There was none of the magical fantasy I'd wanted from this book, instead we get a few snatches of some dark tales that Alice's grandmother is said to have written but they are disjointed and don't add much to the narrative. Alice instead comes across as unhinged and slightly mad and it was more a weird Wonderland vibe than a magical dark fairy tale.

I was disappointed by this, however, I am learning this year that I am not gaining anything by plowing through books I don't enjoy. I'd rather cut my losses and move on. I was frustrated not to have the strength to finish this one but this is still very much the exception rather than the norm.

This was a really unique take on fae and a version of their world. It's based more on the classic fairy tale format than most urban fantasy I've read. I'm not sure why there are so many 3 or less star reviews of this as I really enjoyed it. The most YA book genre I've read is probably faerie-based dark fantasy (as well as Alice in Wonderland being my favourite book), so maybe it's just more in my wheelhouse than a lot of other readers'.
I didn't find the writing poor or the plot hard to follow and while I didn't come to particularly care about any of the characters, the action kept me reading and I moved through the book fairly quickly.
The book starts out like a lot of urban fantasy where Alice (kind of on the nose but better than the usual eyeroll-inducing YA fantasy names) is being followed by some shady characters and more and more of the elements of her grandmother's hard-to-find-yet-famous published fairy tale collection bleed into her assumed-normal existence. However, once things kick off and she ends up going into the Hinterland (the world all the books' tales take place in) it's very similar to Alice in Wonderland but much more dark.
I definitely look forward to a sequel and seeing more into the Hinterland.