The Hazel Wood

By Melissa Albert

Book Overview

Welcome to Melissa Albert's The Hazel Wood--the fiercely stunning New York Times bestseller 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.

Don't miss the bestselling sequel to The Hazel Wood, The Night Country or the illustrated collection of twelve fairy tales, Tales from the Hinterland

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 125014793X
• ISBN13: 9781250147936
• Release Date: March 2019
• Publisher: Flatiron Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.2" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 13 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 8 to 12

Customer Reviews

Amazing storytelling, captivating characters!

Certainly not a children's fairytale, The Hazel Wood revamps the meaning behind old fairytales where not everything is a happy ending. The gorgeous writing is captivating with characters that will make your skin crawl or make you fall in love with them. This book is for the morbid fairytale lover.

Very interesting read

If you like Grimm fairytales this may be something you’d like. Alice Proserpine and her mother are constantly on the move and she doesn’t know why, only that if they stay in one place too long, strange things happen. She crosses paths with a guy named Finch and together begin unraveling why it’s happening. All she is told when her mother disappears is not to go to her grandmother’s estate, the Hazel Wood. But all of these strange occurrences surround the stories her grandmother published in a book nearly impossible to find. What I liked is Melissa Albert has a beautiful way with description; she makes something we’ve read many times feel new. This is perfectly eerie, mysterious, and fairy-tale-esque. There was not anything I disliked about the book; if you’re not a fan of cursing, there is a bit of colorful language but otherwise, it’s a clean, eerie story. No one part felt like it slowed the tempo of the plot; each part flowed very well and Albert makes the reader care what happens to the characters Alice crosses paths with. I would read more of her work.