Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2018
368 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
Welcome to the Hazel Wood - the fiercely stunning contemporary fantasy everyone is raving about.
Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice's life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice's grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away - by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: "Stay away from the Hazel Wood."
Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother's cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began - and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.
"Starred Review. 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. Grade 9 and up." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Highly literary, occasionally surreal, and grounded by Alice's clipped, matter-of-fact voice, The Hazel Wood is a dark story that readers will have trouble leaving behind. The buzz for this debut is deafening, and the fact that the film adaption is already in the works doesn't hurt." - Booklist
"Starred Review. Simultaneously wondrous and horrific, dreamlike and bloody, lyrical and creepy, exquisitely haunting and casually, brutally cruel. Not everybody lives, and certainly not 'happily ever after' - but within all the grisly darkness, Alice's fierce integrity and hard-won self-knowledge shine unquenched." - Kirkus
"Starred Review. An empowering read that will be especially popular with fans of fairy-tale retellings." - School Library Journal
"Thoroughly, creepily captivating." - Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling and Jane, Unlimited
"Will be your next obsession." - Stephanie Garber, author of Caraval
"Destined to be a classic." - Kami Garcia, author of The Lovely Reckless
"Breathtaking." - Seanan McGuire, author of Every Heart a Doorway
"Mesmerizing." - Karen McManus, author of One of Us Is Lying
"One of the best books I've read in years." - Jennifer Niven, author of All the Bright Places
This information about The Hazel Wood was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Melissa Albert is the founding editor of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog and the managing editor of BN.com. She has written for McSweeney's, Time Out Chicago, MTV, and more. Melissa is from Illinois and lives in Brooklyn. The Hazel Wood is her first novel.
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