The Hazel Wood | Melissa Albert

I picked up this book hoping that it would save me from my reading funk. You know that feeling when you're in the middle of several books, a pile of abandoned paperbacks on your nightstand so large your boyfriend thinks they're just something decorative you use to set your alarm clock atop? That's what I've experienced for the last year, not committing to books all the way through unless they were for class or written by Neil Gaiman, or otherwise short enough to finish in one fell swoop.

This book saved me from that. It was a fantasy book like I haven't read for adults in a long while, a grown-up Sisters Grimm story that was dark and ethereal and haunted. This book hasn't officially been released yet (I got an ARC from a Goodreads giveaway) so I don't want to spoil anything, but if you're aiming to be totally surprised by this book, read no further. 

THE HAZEL WOOD will take you to the heart and mind of a girl called Alice who can't remember her childhood well, whose icy anger courses through her veins, and whose mother has spent the last seventeen years tugging her along on the run from bad luck. This bad luck always finds them. Alice secretly thinks it is caused by her never-before-seen grandmother, Althea Proserpine.

Althea is a mysterious author of fairy tale whose book is nearly impossible to find, and when Alice's mother is kidnapped, Alice must team up with a boy from her class who's read the stories before. Something about a man with orange hair and a lady whose birdcage can swallow souls leads them to believe that the bad luck following Alice is the work of the Hinterland.

With the financial support of Ellery Finch' s father's fortune, the pair make their way to the Hazel Wood, Alice's grandmother's home in the Hinterland, in search of Ella Proserpine. What they find there and along the way is bloody, twisted, and captivating. There is loss and revelation and glow-in-the-dark details on the ceiling of a motel. There's a helpful step sister and a myriad of fairy tale archetypes turned upwards and sideways and given new names and accents. How will Alice rescue her mother from the Hinterland? Will the Hinterland let her? 

Grab your comb, feather, and bone, and check the mirror every once in a while to see if your eyes are black from end to end. You're going to love this book.