The Hazel Wood: 1

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An addictive thriller crossed with the darkest of fairytales that's guaranteed to keep you up all night... Alice’s sharp-edged narration and Althea’s terrifying fairy tales, interspersed throughout, build a tantalizing tale of secret histories and magic that carries costs and consequences. There is no happily-ever-after resolution except this: Alice’s hard-won right to be in charge of her own story.” — Publishers Weekly , starred review A magnificent creation, laden with wonder and fear impossible to turn away from . . . Literal goose bumps' Booklist After they’d determined I hadn’t been assaulted, after the redheaded man was identified as a drifter who’d stolen a car a few miles from the place we were staying in Utah, my mother decided we’d never talk about it again. She didn’t want to hear it when I told her the man was kind, that he’d told me stories and had a warm laugh that made me believe, deep in my six-year-old’s heart, he was actually my father come to claim me. She’d been shown the redheaded man in custody through a one-way mirror, and swore she’d never seen him before. Her mother is stolen, by a figure who claims to come from the cruel supernatural world from her grandmother's stories.

I want to read Tales from the Hinterland (Grandnanny’s book) so badly. If Melissa Albert is smart, or loves me or the world or both, she will write that spinoff." Hazel’s ability to produce multiple stems gives it a dense, spreading appearance and has led to its extensive use for coppicing. It is a short-lived tree, reaching 50-70 years in age, but if it is coppiced, either by people or naturally through damage to its trunks, it will live much longer.By then I’d figured out the man wasn’t who he said he was: a friend of my grandmother, Althea, taking me to see her. Althea was already secluded in her big house then, and I’d never met her. She had no friends, just fans, and my mother told me that’s what the man was. A fan who wanted to use me to get to my grandma.

There was once a rich merchant who lived at the edge of the woods, in a tiny town in the Hinterland.' So it's not a witch who lives at the edge of the woods, it's a man - but we soon learn that his wife is 'strange', so there is a witch there, too, after all... Somehow, these stories managed to speak to people across different social classes, living in different countries and culture. Whether these stories travelled from one place and managed to take root in another, or whether they were created and evolved independently, the fact that they exist in so many forms is still absolutely remarkable. And somehow, these stories that resonate in the past, still resonate now, centuries later. It makes such a detailed, realistic world (v helpful for magical realism as bonkers as this) and is also just the best reading experience. I received an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher (thank you!) in exchange for an honest review. **

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This is a book of fairytales (my favorite) that is full of darkness and blood and powerful girls and selfish girls and powerful girls and violence and anger and revenge and badassery (all of which are my other favorites). I love fairy tales because these stories are distillations of people’s hope, beliefs, morals, caution and fears. Little girls shouldn’t stray in the woods by themselves, because bad things will find them. A new stepmother (and her own children) changes the dynamics of the household, and can the grieving child really trust a stranger who is here to replace their own mother? An underdog servant can eventually escape from the daily grind of life, become the belle of the ball and finds her happily ever after, provided that she stays kind, humble and most of all, working for her superiors. A woman’s husband may be beastly, but he would eventually become a prince as long as she keeps waiting, because what other choice does she have? Young girls who don’t live within the rules of society are detrimental, even outright harmful to men, and can only be tamed by men through matrimony. These are the collective experiences and beliefs of the past generations. And in a way, they are still relevant today.