The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Rating: ⭐⭐ 

“Life never turns out how you imagine it will when you’re young. Everything is smaller than you think, or too big. It all smells a little funny and fits like somebody else’s shirt.”

Once upon a time, as all stories start, a girl named Alice Proserpine got lost in a fairy tale. Her grandmother, whom she’s never met, is legendary for her one-hit-wonder book of fairy stories, Tales from the Hinterland. Despite her grandmother’s fame status, Alice and her mother have spent their lives running from bad luck. When Alice’s mother goes missing, though, she faces her fate head-on. Everything, it seems, comes back to her grandmother and the Hazel Wood. With the help of her only friend, Ellery Finch, Alice goes on a search to find the Hazel Wood and her mother; only, she ends up finding more than she bargained for.

Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood smashes together a fantasy world of dark fairytale characters with the real world. While an engaging premise, the novel does a poor job of properly acclimating the reader to the world of the Hinterland and its occupants. Because of this, the flow of the story ends up feeling disjointed. The writing style doesn’t help much with this, either. The writing seems to jump back and forth from sounding like a teenager to more sophisticated narration. And the figurative language is nothing short of bizarre. At one point, Alice mentions, "My mouth tasted like dead coffee." Really? I would love an explanation of how dead coffee is supposed to taste. There's another taste reference to" bitter helicopter seeds." Who is eating helicopter seeds to determine the level of bitterness? Lastly, the attempted love-hate relationship between characters Alice and Finch feels forced and unnatural. Unfortunately, this world of fairytales fails in its quest to convince readers that magical worlds really do exist.