The Hazel Wood

I went into this book knowing nothing other than Korrina loved it enough to include it in an Owlcrate box. I had limited expectations and am happy to say I was blown away by this book. I loved the writing style and the feel of this book.

Pros:
-Writing Style: This book feels like a fairytale. I felt like I was reading one of Grim's fairytales. I loved that this book was able to place me in that mindset and still tell me a complex story.
- World: I loved the world of this book. The Hinterland and The Hazel Wood are these “imaginary” places that Alice and Finch are trying to get to and I loved reading their adventure both while searching and while they were there.
- It is a super small aspect of this book, but there is an encounter between Alice and Finch where Finch is “yelling” at Alice about how she dealt with a cop and how he would never have been able to get away with that. While it was a subtle scene in the book, it held weight with me and I appreciated the candor regarding race.
-I'm going to mark this point as a spoiler just to be safe, but to me, it is not really a true spoiler. Romance: Technically this should say lack of romance, but I really appreciated that Melissa Albert kept this about Alice and finding out about herself and her family. While Alice definitely got close to Finch, there was not this other story of them falling in love on their journey and I really appreciated that.

Cons:
- Timeline: There were aspects of this that were confusing when it came to explaining Alice and the timeline. There were places that I had to reread passages to make sure I was making the necessary connections and understanding what had happened in the past.
- Ending: I know there is a second book coming, but I feel like Alice had all this growth and development and we learned a lot, but then the ending was rushed and her reunion with certain characters happened as we flew through this info dump in the last two chapters. I think the last few chapters could have benefited for a little more editing and not rushing through the ending. There were also a lot of things that I feel like should have been discussed but were just ignored. Hopefully we get more answers in The Night Country.