The Hazel Wood (Hazel Wood, #1)

by Melissa Albert

[Artemis]

I wanted to love The Hazel Wood, which has been on my to-read list since Fall 2017. When I finally got around to reading it, I could hardly believe how the modern fairy tale genre could fail me. The synopsis was so great, and my hands were literally itching to own a copy.

My fairy-tale tag on GoodReads is filled with both good and bad attempts at mixing modern elements with fairy-tales, and I hate to admit that this falls in that latter category. The writing, while good but not great, really failed to assist in imagining this world. This should not have been a problem for even new, or re-imagined fairy-tales — they have familiar enough elements that the audience should have no time picturing what the world is like.

The main characters of Alice and Finch are not interesting enough. There were a lot of things that just didn’t make sense about them, and for not knowing characters that well there were many moments where it felt like they were acting out of character. Perhaps I just wasn’t following along as closely because I was not interested in most of the story.

Overall, a great idea but poor execution. I didn’t want to rate this so low but what I can do but be honest.