anne
Written on Apr 4, 2015
Near the little town of Fairfold, in the darkest part of the forest, lies a glass casket. Inside the casket lies a sleeping faerie prince that none can rouse. He's the most fascinating thing Hazel and her brother Ben have ever seen. They dream of waking him - but what happens when dreams come true? In the darkest part of the forest, you must be careful what you wish for...NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Holly Black spins a dark, dangerous and utterly beautiful faerie tale, guaranteed to steal your heart. Holly Black is a NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author, co-creator of The Spiderwick Chronicles and author of YA novels including the widely acclaimed THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN.
- ISBN10 0316213055
- ISBN13 9780316213059
- Publish Date 13 January 2015 (first published 9 December 2014)
- Publish Status Active
- Imprint Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
- Format eBook
- Pages 336
- Language English
Reviews
e_rodz_leb
Written on Feb 12, 2015
“Down a path worn into the woods, past a stream and a hollowed-out log full of pill bugs and termites, was a glass coffin. It rested right on the ground, and in it slept a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives.”
You can get a pretty good idea of what the story is about from the synopsis, so I won’t rehash it here. How much did I love The Darkest Part of the Forrest? Let me count the ways:
Great characters – I love ALL the characters. The good, the bad and the ugly. They were exceptionally crafted, especially the formidable and diverse fey. I do believe that Black is the authority on anything fairy :)
Intricate, twisty plot – I have saw any of the twists coming! It felt like a driving while blind: unpredictable, surprising and unexpected. I loved it! There are stories of heartbreak, of betrayal, of vengeance, revenge, justice and more.
Kick-ass heroine – Oh, Hazel! *Let me pause here and tell you that you are awesome girl* Hazel is a knight and she does knightly things. She believes on right and wrong, on magic and fairies, on fate and responsibility. She’s fiercely loyal and at the same time blocks from her mind everything that hurts. She’s afraid to love and to risk her heart because of her parents irresponsibility (more about that later!) In summary, Hazel is amazing ;)
Diversity – Jack, the changeling is of “dark” skin. Ben, Hazel’s sister is gay. They both find significant others in this story. Hazel is a knight. Ben’s first boyfriend was Indian.
“We love until we do not. For us, love doesn't fade gradually. It snaps like a branch bent too far.”
Holly Black’s writing – Black’s writing is her own brand of amazing! It’s lyrical, expressive, memorable, and much more. The story is told in the third person POV, mostly from Hazel’s POV, but a few chapters are from Jack and Ben’s.
The only other thing I would add is that I can’t believe how irresponsible Ben and Hazel’s parents were. They are both artists that were not done “partying” before they had children. They basically left Ben and Hazel to raise themselves and roam free through the forest. I know this makes sense in the story and (I hope) shouldn’t happen in real life.
“There's a monster in our wood. She'll get you if you're not good. Drag you under leaves and sticks. Punish you for all your tricks. Anest of hair and gnawed bone. You are never, ever coming... home.”
This is my first book narrated by Lauren Fortgang and it was awesome! I kid you not, this was one of the best audiobooks ever!! (*note the double exclamation*) The voices were so distinct, unique and different from each other. Everything came together to create an incredible experience. I saw that Fortgang narrated the Grisha books and I’m thinking of getting them too.
This review was originally posted on Reading With ABC
lizarodz
Written on Feb 12, 2015
“Down a path worn into the woods, past a stream and a hollowed-out log full of pill bugs and termites, was a glass coffin. It rested right on the ground, and in it slept a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives.”
You can get a pretty good idea of what the story is about from the synopsis, so I won’t rehash it here. How much did I love The Darkest Part of the Forrest? Let me count the ways:
Great characters – I love ALL the characters. The good, the bad and the ugly. They were exceptionally crafted, especially the formidable and diverse fey. I do believe that Black is the authority on anything fairy :)
Intricate, twisty plot – I have saw any of the twists coming! It felt like a driving while blind: unpredictable, surprising and unexpected. I loved it! There are stories of heartbreak, of betrayal, of vengeance, revenge, justice and more.
Kick-ass heroine – Oh, Hazel! *Let me pause here and tell you that you are awesome girl* Hazel is a knight and she does knightly things. She believes on right and wrong, on magic and fairies, on fate and responsibility. She’s fiercely loyal and at the same time blocks from her mind everything that hurts. She’s afraid to love and to risk her heart because of her parents irresponsibility (more about that later!) In summary, Hazel is amazing ;)
Diversity – Jack, the changeling is of “dark” skin. Ben, Hazel’s sister is gay. They both find significant others in this story. Hazel is a knight. Ben’s first boyfriend was Indian.
“We love until we do not. For us, love doesn't fade gradually. It snaps like a branch bent too far.”
Holly Black’s writing – Black’s writing is her own brand of amazing! It’s lyrical, expressive, memorable, and much more. The story is told in the third person POV, mostly from Hazel’s POV, but a few chapters are from Jack and Ben’s.
The only other thing I would add is that I can’t believe how irresponsible Ben and Hazel’s parents were. They are both artists that were not done “partying” before they had children. They basically left Ben and Hazel to raise themselves and roam free through the forest. I know this makes sense in the story and (I hope) shouldn’t happen in real life.
“There's a monster in our wood. She'll get you if you're not good. Drag you under leaves and sticks. Punish you for all your tricks. Anest of hair and gnawed bone. You are never, ever coming... home.”
This is my first book narrated by Lauren Fortgang and it was awesome! I kid you not, this was one of the best audiobooks ever!! (*note the double exclamation*) The voices were so distinct, unique and different from each other. Everything came together to create an incredible experience. I saw that Fortgang narrated the Grisha books and I’m thinking of getting them too.
This review was originally posted on Reading With ABC
girlinthepages
Written on Feb 4, 2015
I know what you’re thinking.
You’re wondering how in the heck I only gave this book 2.5 stars.
You’re probably wondering if I even read the same book as you did.
Well, full disclosure: It breaks my heart to rate this book so low, but it just didn’t work for me.
I was so so excited to read The Darkest Part of the Forest, as it was the first novel I picked up by Holly Black. I had read her short story in the anthology My True Love Gave To Me and I adored it. I immediately wanted to read everything by her. I heard all of the rave reviews, and I went in with very, very high expectations. I was unfortunately an unwitting victim of the hype monster.
Before you exit your browser in a fit of rage, hear me out.
The Darkest Part of the Forest has a lot of great things about it. My favorite aspect was the world building, as Black seems to have the magic touch when it comes to magical realism in YA. I loved the idea that Fairfold was a “contemporary” town that coexisted with the fae, and it was just a fact of life, two species dancing delicately around each other for decades. I loved how Black had little folk tales and flashbacks sprinkled throughout the novel that really painted a vivid picture of the fair folk’s interactions with humans. I loved the mythical quality of the town and the mystery surrounding the sleeping prince. I want more YA where the paranormal and painfully normal coincide and co-exist knowingly.
However, I found that I couldn’t really connect with the novel. Hazel and Ben and Jack all sounded fine in theory, but I feel like I didn’t really get to the point where I cared about what happened to them. Perhaps they paled too much next to their supernatural neighbors? I found also that I was often bored and wasn’t dying to pick up the book after I had set it down, as 75% of it consisted of Hazel trying to hide very important things from everyone else (and does this ever work out for the better in novels? Absolutely not). I also felt that the romances were sort of rushed, with everyone being paired off conveniently at the end. The central draw of the synopsis of the novel was also the mystery surrounding the sleeping horned prince, but he didn’t feel as mysterious or monumentally important to the book when he was released from his glass coffin very early on and walked around driving people crazy with his cryptic demands and kissing indiscriminately. Honestly, he didn’t seem much different than a typical teenage male character to me.
In a lot of ways this book almost read more middle grade for me. The plot becomes rather simplistic: stop the monster and save the town. I think this could partially be due to the fact that Hazel and Ben’s involvement with the Fae stems back to when they were small children and would go “hunting” for them in the woods, so in a lot of ways it constantly felt like Hazel and Ben were out of their league when it came to the supernatural elements, and I never really got a sense of urgency when dangerous things happened, because they felt more like characters pretending to be heroes.
Overall: The Darkest Part of the Forest fell flat for me. It had great world building and a charming atmosphere, but I felt more like I was reading a middle grade novel. I found I personally couldn’t connect with the characters or engage with the plot in more than a obligatory way. Yet this has not prevented me from still wanting to experience more of Holly Black’s writing. I really, really still want to try out her other novels and engage more with her talent for writing atmospheric settings and crafting magical realism. This book just didn’t capture my heart the way her writing has before.
leahrosereads
Written on Jan 17, 2015
In the woods is a glass coffin. It rests right on the ground, and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives…
This story follows Hazel Evans, and her brother Ben, as they live in a town not like any I have ever heard. Sure, Fairfold has shops and restaurants and schools and all of that may be very normal. However, Fairfold also has the Folk living in the forest surrounding it. The Folk are elves and fairies and hags and ogres (and so much more). They’re magical, and the people of Fairfold have learned to co-exist with these wondrous creatures, while also being wary of them.
Although the people of Fairfold live in relative peace and quiet, the tourists that visit the town to see the magic up close and personal tend not to have the same protection from the Folk. When one of the biggest tourist attractions, the horned boy in the glass coffin wakes up, Hazel, Ben, and the people of Fairfold’s lives get a whole lot messier.
And of course, it’s up to Hazel to save the day, like she had always done when her and Ben were young and they pretended to be heroes.
While I may not have liked the heroine right away, Hazel Evans really grew on me. She was bluntly honest and also secretive. It made her hard to like, but she grew on me, and I felt like her character developed the most throughout this novel.
The other characters, though, were spectacular from the very beginning. I absolutely adored Ben and Jack, and when Severin was introduced, I loved what he added to the story as well.
Ben, Hazel’s brother, was truly a delightful character. He was human, but had a blessing from the Folk, that gave him this gift of music. He was the bard to Hazel’s knight, and with this gift, he was able to understand his best friend a little bit better.
Jack, Ben’s best friend shouldn’t have even been in Fairfold. However, his mother switched him with another family’s baby. Because she could. Because Jack is a changeling and the Folk like to play tricks. The baby’s mother discovered this deceit by though, and got her baby back, but kept Jack as well as punishment. I loved Jack probably the most out of all the characters, and I knew from the beginning that he would be Hazel’s love interest.
Then there’s Severin. He’s the horned boy from the coffin, and when he’s first awoken, I was a little nervous there’d be some rivalry going on for Hazel’s affections, but there isn’t. Because Severin does care for an Evans. It’s just that it’s Ben. I absolutely loved the fact that Holly Black introduced Severin as Ben’s love interest. It didn’t feel forced, just skillfully planned, and I absolutely loved Severin and Ben’s interactions.
Although the story itself may have felt a little generic. I don’t feel like any of the concepts or tales are new or all that interesting on their own, but I did think that Holly Black’s storytelling really enhanced all of these pretty traditional lore.
I was absolutely entertained while reading this story. Especially when it took on less of a fantasy feel and moved more towards a darker tone. The way Black morphed it from one to another, and then back again, seemed effortless.
Finally, I like that this is a standalone novel. It’s been the first fantasy/paranormal that I’ve read that hasn’t been part of a series in a very long time. I love that Black was able to tell THE DARKEST PART OF THE FOREST in one book. It didn’t feel rushed, and it didn’t feel unfinished.
I’m looking forward to checking out Black’s other work, especially if some of her novels are similar in style to this one. I just absolutely loved this.
jnikkir
Written on Dec 26, 2014
-----------------------------
I am so incredibly conflicted about this one, guys! On the surface, it sounds like something I should have loved. That blurb speaks to me. Faeries! A sleeping prince! HOLLY BLACK!! But honestly, I think I just wasn't in the mood for this -- I mean, I was in the mood for what I expected it to be, but it turned out that my expectations ≠ reality.
Nothing about this book really clicked for me. Objectively, I know that the writing was really good. I know that all the elements of a great story were there. I know that the words on the page described characters I should've connected with. But I just didn't. There was a spark missing, and I just don't know how to explain it.
In short: The modern setting threw me off. The pacing seemed odd. The characters never really came to life for me. And my emotions throughout the book were just sort of flat the entire time.
Setting
First off, I didn't expect it to be so firmly set in modern times. This is a town in the southern U.S., where humans and faeries coexist. The humans know to be watchful -- and to do certain things to appease the fairies -- and tourists know there's something magical and strange about the place. Every so often, someone will go missing or have something awful happen to them, but that's just how it is in Fairfold -- they must've been "acting like a tourist". No matter what happens, though, the town just goes on as it always has, with no major attention being drawn because of its strangeness.
This sounds kind of cool, but I never found myself going "wow this is awesome". Maybe I felt weird that it was set in the US? Maybe things would've made more sense to me, and felt more organic, if it was set in a town in the UK or something? I honestly don't know. I love magical realism if the two -- the magic and the realism -- are woven together in a way that pulls me in. But somehow, that didn't happen here, for me. Something didn't click, and I never connected.
Pacing
Additionally, the pacing was... strange, for me. I felt like nothing really happened until about halfway through the book (which is not exactly true - stuff happened, it just felt super slow). And then way too much happened in the last 15-20%. So initially, the first half of the book never hooked me, and then when it started to "get good", I wasn't adequately invested, so I never got caught up in it.
Characters
*SIGH* I'm really most disappointed in my reaction to the characters. They never came to life for me. There was something about the way Hazel and Ben's timelines were handled... In the beginning, they reference things that you know nothing about, and then those things are explained much later... and I just didn't find them to be very compelling characters until the whole story came out. But even the conclusion didn't wow me -- it was more of a "Oh, finally, now things make sense." Again, I felt a disconnect for some reason; there was something keeping me from fully investing, and it drove me crazy.
In conclusion...
I HAVE ALL THE SADS, GUYS. I just couldn't get into this book -- the setting, pacing, and characters never clicked for me, and my feelings throughout were just... flat. I never really disliked it, but I never found myself loving it either. There were a couple instances where things picked up and I did get a little nervous or excited for the characters, but other than that, it just wasn't super engaging for me.
Actually, I think the feeling I got was one I've felt when reading original fairy tales or old legends - they don't have that sense of immediacy or connection that I usually look for when I read. It feels like you're an outsider. And while that can be okay for some stories - shorter ones in particular - that didn't work for me in The Darkest Part of the Forest.
Like I said, though, I think my feelings can be at least partly attributed to the expectations ≠ reality thing. I know a lot of people who really, really loved this one, so take my feels with a grain of salt. This is the kind of book that I would definitely recommend checking out if you like the synopsis, because you might love it! But for me, it didn't quite do it.
--
There were books involved...
cornerfolds
Written on Nov 30, 2014
*Review to come!*
Angie
Written on Nov 29, 2014
I really liked The Darkest Part of the Forest in the beginning. I loved how the fae were kind of the town's little secret, but also attracted tourism. I also really liked how the fairytale trope was flipped, and it was the ordinary human girl saving the extraordinary boy from evil. There's also a changeling who lives amongst them, and is best friends with Hazel's brother. There's just a lot of little things that I really enjoyed, but about halfway through I found myself kind of over it. Maybe there were just too many interesting, individual things that I loved but didn't necessarily get me more involved in the story. I kind of had this feeling of the author trying too hard to be unique which annoyed me. Not to say that's what she is doing, but that's just how I've felt about everything I'd read from her so far.
The Darkest Part of the Forest did pull me back in again toward the end, since it has a lot of great twists. I loved how things weren't exactly how they seemed, and there were little details that made for fun "AH HA!" moments. But all of that didn't make up for the nagging feeling I had throughout. I really do not know what it is about this author's writing that just does not sit right with me. I absolutely adore all of her ideas, but then they all just kind of lose me once the plot actually picks up. Perhaps I'm just a fan of her world building and not her plots.
Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.
shannonmiz
Written on Nov 23, 2014
This was my first foray into Holly Black's work, and it certainly will not be my last. I won't lie, I was wary about the Faerie situation. (It seems like I am wary about a lot of stuff, no?) But it wasn't a completely magical world, it was set in a very contemporary setting in the town of Fairfold, where humans know that the fae live among them. I love this, because you don't feel completely out of place in the world Black has created. Instead, there are typical high school parties coexisting with a sleeping faerie in a glass casket. Relationship, friendship, and family drama continues all while the Folk are conducting their business, but the writing and world building make the whole thing feel completely believable.
Hazel and Ben are wonderful characters, so incredibly flawed and messy, but for good reason. Their family is kind of a disaster in general, with their parents far more worried about their own lives than those of their children. Since they've nothing better to do, Hazel and Ben spend much of their younger years being enthralled with the Folk, and are captivated by the boy in the coffin. Obviously, this will come into play, though I won't say how.
The plot of this book was great because it had many elements to it. There was a mysterious element, romances, family issues, character evolution, diversity, and of course, faerie politics. The writing was beautiful, and the book flowed quite well.
If I were to have a gripe, it would be that I did want to feel a bit more toward Hazel. While I was sympathetic toward her, I didn't feel completely connected. I also felt that while the end was sufficient (more than, really, as I quite enjoyed it) and neither too neatly wrapped nor too open, it was a bit abrupt. But really, these are minor compared to how much I enjoyed the rest of the book.
Bottom Line: I will definitely be reading more of Holly Black's work. Honestly, I was sad when I had to pass this book along, because I wanted to keep it! Even though some of the elements in the book were dark, The Darkest Part of the Forest was an absolutely enthralling book that I don't hesitate to recommend.
This review was originally posted on It Starts at Midnight
Berls
Written on Nov 16, 2014
You ever see a book and just know you have to read it, based on the cover alone? And then you find out what it's about and you realize you were right? It is a book MADE for you? That's me and The Darkest Part of the Forest. And I thought I'd have to wait until January 2015 to read it... But thanks to Anya @ On Starships and Dragonwings I read it in November 2014. Thanks Anya!
When I first started reading The Darkest Part of the Forest it surprised me. For some reason after reading the synopsis, I thought this was going to be a historical fantasy world. I don't know if that's what you are expecting - but that's not it at all. No this is our world. And not really even a different version of our world. Its just that in this one little town - Fairfold - most people know that the Fae are real and very present. It's good for their tourism - kind of surprisingly since the tourists are the ones most hurt by the Fae.
But one of the main attractions is a boy, sleeping (not dead, though how they know that I have no idea) in a glass coffin - an unbreakable, glass coffin. He's a point of interest for tourists and locals alike - a focal point for teenage parties. But two people in the town - siblings Hazel and Ben are OBSESSED with the boy. But then Hazel and Ben aren't quite normal anyway.
The way Holly Black wrote Hazel and Ben is probably my favorite part of The Darkest Part of the Forest. Hazel - not Ben - dreams of being a knight. Not a princess, but a knight. LOVE IT! Who says every little girl wants a princess dress, right? And Hazel holds onto those dreams as she grows up and even though she struggles for various reasons, she hasn't lost that part of herself.
And Ben, well he basically is the one who dreams of being the princess (so to speak). He's not a fighter - he's sensitive and has a a musical gift/curse. Who says every boy has to dream of being a knight? LOVE IT! Better yet, Ben is openly gay and through him we get a sweet romance.
I loved the sibling part of the story - probably because I see a lot of my brother and myself in Hazel and Ben. I want to take care of everyone and protect them and he's always been more (seemingly) carefree and light.
I think The Darkest Part of the Forest was a great story, from the fantasy and action to the relationships. The mystery was interesting and had a couple twists I didn't see coming. And I just loved the use of a small town that's supposed to be part of our world but sits somewhere on the fringe. A great book to pick up and start 2015 right!