The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert is probably going to end up being one of my favorite books this year. I would describe it as a little bit The Magicians, a bit Caraval meets Grimm’s Fairy Tales and it is all dark and delicious. My God, you have got to read this one.
Alice has grown up on the road. She and her mother have moved repeated over the course of her seventeen years in order to escape the bad luck that follows them no matter where they run. When Alice’s estranged grandmother, an author with a cult following, dies a recluse at her estate in the Hazel Wood, they falsely believe the bad luck died with her. They settle down in New York City. Alice goes to school, gets a job and her mother gets married. Then the unthinkable happens, Alice’s mother is kidnapped. Alice learns the kidnappers are from the Hinterland, the fictional place in her grandmother’s book of fairy tales. Continue reading “The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert”