Alice and her mother were always a step ahead of bad luck until one day it caught up to them. Living in New York, Alice’s mother had married a wealthy man and seemed to have stopped believe in their bad luck. Working in a coffee shop, Alice see’s a familiar face from her childhood. A man who had kidnapped her to take her back to her grandmother, a famous author of dark fairy tales, at her home in the Hazel Wood. When she spots this man, he doesn’t look a day older than he did ten years ago, so she doesn’t believe her instincts. When she gets home and finds her mother has been kidnapped by the people they had been running from, Alice has to find her grandmother’s estate, hoping that is where her mother is being taken. This is a story of adventure and self discovery for Alice and like the dark fairy tale’s her grandmother wrote, her journey also follows a dark path.

As I started reading The Hazel Wood I loved the world that Melissa Albert had created. Alice, like Alice in Wonderland, seemed to have fallen down a dark hole and as Alice and I learned more about the fairy tale’s that her grandmother wrote it became hard to second guess where the story was leading. When Alice got to the Hazel Wood and her existence was revealed I’ll admit that it became harder for me to like. This was not a Disneyland fairy tale and even though there was a happy ending I didn’t feel very happy at the end.

I had mixed feelings about this novel. The writing was excellent and it was a unique story but in the end I felt “meh”. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

Click this link to purchase! The Hazel Wood: A Novel

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