Michael Barnes
Don't let the forest in' is the second of C.G Drews novels I have read and I can state their beautiful, heart wrenching prose was no one off as it infuses this young adult, queer, dark academia novel. Drew's rich prose fills this tale. I found it immediately captivating from the first line “It hadn’t hurt, the day he cut out his own heart.”
Our protagonist Andrew Perrault (who is described as 'feels too fragile to exist properly in the world, thanks to the intense anxiety that either paralyses him or sends him spiralling' writes haunting terrible fairy tales as a means of managing his anxieties and fears. He is writing them for Thomas Rye – “a freckled kid with a reckless mouth and hair kissed by the devil” who is as talented an artist who draws equally beautiful and terrible images that illustrate these dark monsters of the mind. They are between them … what Andrew spends much of the novel trying to work out. At the lush gothic Wickwood Academy we join them for their final year with polished and high‑achieving twin sister Dove who last year were inseparable but a rift opened between Dove and Thomas last year which has pushed Andrew to try to understand what Thomas means to him.
This would be easier if the school wasn't being stalked by monsters or varied shape, forms an horrors each night, crafted to seem to be echoes of Thomas's drawings and Andrew's stories you can wonder if it is just in the mind, until the Maths teacher dies - (of all those characters encountered so far in the story he was no 2 on my list of won't miss them).
Gabriel Harrison at Elephant Page publishing has recognised "The novel has both asexual and bisexual representation, a dynamic which is often underrepresented even in queer fiction, and was refreshing to read. Seeing Andrew struggle to come to terms with his asexual identity throughout the story is something that will deeply resonate with queer readers, especially those on the asexual spectrum. The author’s bio states that they are aspec themselves, which made me enjoy the novel so much more" which speaks to our need for books like these as 'windows' for me but more importantly as a mirror for your queer folk who don't get to see themselves as heroes in enough stories.
I was enthralled with the ending. It is left ambiguous, allowing the reader to infer their own interpretation of the events that have occurred leading up to it.
Don't let the forest in' is the second of C.G Drews novels I have read and I can state their beautiful, heart wrenching prose was no one off as it infuses this young adult, queer, dark academia novel. Drew's rich prose fills this tale. I found it immediately captivating from the first line “It hadn’t hurt, the day he cut out his own heart.”
Our protagonist Andrew Perrault (who is described as 'feels too fragile to exist properly in the world, thanks to the intense anxiety that either paralyses him or sends him spiralling' writes haunting terrible fairy tales as a means of managing his anxieties and fears. He is writing them for Thomas Rye – “a freckled kid with a reckless mouth and hair kissed by the devil” who is as talented an artist who draws equally beautiful and terrible images that illustrate these dark monsters of the mind. They are between them … what Andrew spends much of the novel trying to work out. At the lush gothic Wickwood Academy we join them for their final year with polished and high‑achieving twin sister Dove who last year were inseparable but a rift opened between Dove and Thomas last year which has pushed Andrew to try to understand what Thomas means to him.
This would be easier if the school wasn't being stalked by monsters or varied shape, forms an horrors each night, crafted to seem to be echoes of Thomas's drawings and Andrew's stories you can wonder if it is just in the mind, until the Maths teacher dies - (of all those characters encountered so far in the story he was no 2 on my list of won't miss them).
Gabriel Harrison at Elephant Page publishing has recognised "The novel has both asexual and bisexual representation, a dynamic which is often underrepresented even in queer fiction, and was refreshing to read. Seeing Andrew struggle to come to terms with his asexual identity throughout the story is something that will deeply resonate with queer readers, especially those on the asexual spectrum. The author’s bio states that they are aspec themselves, which made me enjoy the novel so much more" which speaks to our need for books like these as 'windows' for me but more importantly as a mirror for your queer folk who don't get to see themselves as heroes in enough stories.
I was enthralled with the ending. It is left ambiguous, allowing the reader to infer their own interpretation of the events that have occurred leading up to it.