Review | The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert [CC]

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Hello today I'm going to be doing a review of the Hazel Wood by Melissa
Albert. I received this book from net gallery in exchange for a honest review,
all opinions are my own. You know the drill at this point. The Hazel Wood is the
YA urban fantasy. I thought it was gonna be plain old fantasy but I guess it's
more urban fantasy. Anyways it's about Alice
whose grandmother is a very famous author for having written this book of fairy
tales. Alice has never met her grandmother because her and her mother
have always been moving from place to place because everywhere they go bad
luck follows them. Then one day Alice's mother receives a letter saying that
Alice's grandmother has died and her mother says that their luck has changed,
no bad luck will follow them so they move to New York and they stay there.
That's the first time Alice and her mother ever stayed in one place and things seem
to be going okay for a while until Alice's mother disappears and the only
message Alice has from her mother is do not go to the Hazel wood. Which is
Alice's grandmother's estate that she has been secluded on for the many many
years before she died and that's where our story takes off. As I just mentioned
I thought this book was gonna be pure fantasy it's called the Hazel wood. The
whole thing on the back is "don't go to the Hazel wood" so I'm assuming that
Alice is gonna go to the hazel wood because like what else would you do if the book
is called the hazel wood and your mother tells you not to go to the Hazel wood and
your grandmother who lives on the Hazel wood,
or lived on the hazel wood, has been like there forever. Like you just think
they're gonna go to the Hazel wood to find the mother. And yeah technically
they eventually make it to the Hazel wood but the first two-thirds of the book is
Alice and this other guy trying to get to the Hazel wood and I was like, oh my
god this is not what I signed up for when I wanted to read this book. I wanted the
Hazel wood for at least two-thirds of the book. I could have understood if the
first third of the book was Alice and the other character, Finch, trying to get
to the hazel wood, like that makes sense that they won't just like get into it
magically first try, like it might take them a while. But two-thirds is them just
running around New York trying to figure stuff out and trying to figure out how
to get to the hazel wood, where it's located and then finally the last third
is them is them at the hazel wood and that's where we really get into the fantasy and
fairy tale elements. But it's just not what I wanted personally and maybe if I
have known going into the book that only the last third is gonna be the fantasy part
I would have liked this more but it's not what I expected therefore I didn't
really like it. Let's just go back to the beginning real quick. First I'll talk
about a little bit about Finch, which is the guy that helps Alice try to figure
all this out, and goes with her around trying to get to the hazel blood. So
Finch, Ellery Finch, is black and Jewish which is pretty great. Other people have talked
about the representation which was eh, yeah. We'll get to that a little bit
later. His motivation for doing all the stuff and just like leaving his life
behind never really made sense to me. Like they say it but it's more of a
telling you as opposed to showing you so I never really believed him. And so like
the whole book I was like, why are you here? why are you doing any of this? this
is like too much for this girl you've - you don't really know. Like you've been
going to school together for a while but you don't really know each other, and now
all of a sudden you were just like giving up everything to go on this
adventure with her for like days. Just like leaves home for days, with no word
to his parents. and I was like what are you doing? I don't understand. And
then there's this fact that Alice never once thinks to go to the cops after her
mother disappears. Cuz at first she doesn't realize that it's for fantasy
reasons and that there's like monsters and fairytale creatures that are real,
that have taken her mother. She just thinks it's like kidnappers or somebody
like trying to take her mom for ransom because she's married to a rich dude. And
she never like once ever even contemplates the idea of going to the
police. She just goes to Finch automatically and I'm like, but why? The
only time the cops are mentioned are by Finch after something else happens and
they're like oh we should go to the cops to report this other incident but not to
report the fact that your mother is missing?? Also it takes over a hundred and
thirty pages to actually get to the part where the mom leaves the message of, don't go
to the Hazel wood. Just if that is the whole big plot point on the summary of
your book, on the back of the book, on the inside dust jacket, it shouldn't take
over 130 pages to get there. Your book should take maybe fifty, maybe a hundred
if you really want to push it, but a hundred and thirty pages is absolutely
ridiculous to get the part we all know is coming. Which is essentially my main
complaint about this book is I think it was a hundred pages too long. And that
those hundred pages should have been taken out of the first two thirds that
aren't part of Hazel wood storyline. Those should have been taken away and then we
would have gotten to the hazel wood sooner and the book would've been a lot more enjoyable in my
opinion. I have a note in my phone that says page 160 and it's just like some of
those emojis where it's like the side-eye. But I don't have my physical
copy with me, cuz I also have a physical copy that I received from work, because I
lent it to a co-worker to read so I don't remember what on page 160 of the arc
that I found to be side-eye worthy, but something happened and I side-eyed
it. So there's a thing. Really quickly I'll talk about the things that I did
really love about the story and that is the stories from the grandmothers book
of fairy tales. You get to read two of those stories from the grandmothers book
of fairy tales and both of those stories I loved so much. The writing of them, the
atmosphere of them. They were these perfect mixture of creepy but not too
creepy, and just kind of like eerie. I just thought they were so well done. I
wish we'd gotten more of them. I think it was actually recently announced that she
is going to be publishing, the author will be publishing the actual full book
of fairy tales. I think they're supposed to be 12 and I'm so excited for that and
I will definitely buy that book up like right away, straight away because I want
it so badly. Those were just beautiful and I wish
those had been more a part of the story. I did figure they would be more part of
the story and they just kind of weren't. Another thing I wasn't a huge fan of, and
I think once again it was because I wasn't aware that so much of this story
was gonna take place in modern-day New York, I thought it would be more of a
fantasy. Is that there were a lot of references to things from our day and
time, like Etsy. And those just really drew me out of the story and I didn't
like them. A lot of times I don't mind when things mention things from our time
period. I know other people don't like those things because they think it really dates
the book. I don't mind them in like contemporaries, but in something like
this, I really wish they had been taken out.
I'm going to talk about the scene that a lot of people have talked about in their
reviews. Especially around the representation of Finch and the fact
that he is black. And that is a scene that happens with a cop. Now at first I was
kind of like ,yeah, you go Alice, because the cop is being a sexist asshole, and
I'm like, you go, you call them out. But then Finch makes up the really
great point that you can't do that, because he's sitting right there and
that the way cops treat him is a very very different from the way that a cop would
treat Alice, who is white. And like as other people have said Alice kind of
brushes this off as like, well you're rich so it doesn't count. Like internally she's like,
oh yeah he's right. Like that's a thing that I should be aware of. But then like
immediately like dismisses it and like gets so angry
about the fact that Finch called her out that she tries to drive them off the
road. Because that's a thing also that Alice
has anger issues, which I did enjoy for the most part because I think that's
something we don't get a see very often is girls being angry in a teen books and
I guess really in general. We don't see girls getting to be angry and that being
okay. This was the one time in the book where that was like what too far, because
racism. And his points were very valid and then she's like, nah don't call me
out I'm gonna drive us off the road because I'm angry. like no. And then
shortly after that scene there's a scene that I can't can't talk about too much
in depth because it would be spoilery, but there's a scene with Alice and Finch
and some of the fairy tale creatures that exist in this world, that was really
weird. It kind of came out of nowhere in my
opinion. There was like a plot twist in there that I was like that doesn't
really make sense to me. There wasn't enough to build up to that plot twist
for me for it to make sense. And just everything happening in that scene, like
even now I having finished the book I'm like I don't understand the point in this
scene. I don't understand the point of those two fairytale creatures for the most
part. And there was one - with this one fairytale creature that you've seen
kind of throughout the book who's supposed to be really scary and she gets into a
cab. For some reason the image of these fairytale creatures that I'm just like
imagining we're able to kind of pop up where they needed to pop up because they're
creepy and scary. But they mention them having to like actually get in cabs
to get anywhere just like broke any scariness they had like brought into me.
Like if your creepy characters get into a cab, like fairytale, like not even
like human characters, have to get into a cab to get to places, that. I don't know,
it's just not scary to me anymore. Finally after that we reach the part where we
get to the hinterlands, the hazel wood. The hinterlands are where all these fairy
tales were based off of and obviously it's a real place. You find that out or
you get the idea that it's a real place very early on in the book. Within like
pages of the book starting. We finally get there and I really liked this last
section a lot more. I think unfortunately for me though after the first two-thirds
of the book it was a little too late and I didn't enjoy them as much as I could
have if they'd come sooner in the book. Because at this point I was just kind of
ready for the book to be over. I was ready for it to be done with. It was too
long. Also there was a really really disappointing thing that was done in
this section of the book and that's - towards the beginning of the book Alice
receives these three items. I won't talk about where, but she has these three
items that she's carried with her throughout the whole book, and the use of
those items were so inconsequential. They were just like over in the blink of an eye.
Those items had been used. Their use was over. It's like, I don't get it. So it was a very
fairytale thing, like you need one of these items to get through this
challenge. Like literally it was so easy to get through all these challenges even
with those items, like I understand they were there to make it so she'd get
through these challenges but it was too easy. And also, so the first item she
realizes she needs to use. The second two items they literally had to warm up in
her pocket for her to be like, oh I should use this item in this situation,
and that's too easy. Also I think all three of them are used
within the same chapter. So we've carried around all three of these things only
for them to get used with in one chapter. And that was the end of that storyline.
And the only other thing I really liked about this book, besides the like
fairytale aspects of the book, was the romance didn't go the way I expected.
Which is always a great surprise for me. Cuz most romances go the way I expect them to go.
So this was a surprise. That was cool. Um but besides that this was book was
pretty disappointing for me. I did read this in like one sitting I believe. I was
on vacation, just sat on a couch and read it in one sitting. So it was enjoyable
for the most part but once again it was way way too long. It wasn't fairytale
enough, fantasy enough for what I had expected and what I feel like the back
of the book promised me. I feel like people might enjoy it more though if
they know going into it that it's not gonna be super fantasy heavy. I'd give this
book about a 2, a 2.5. I will definitely definitely be picking up the book of
fairytales that the author is going to be publishing. And I think she's also
publishing a sequel to this, or a book that's set in the same world. I'm not
sure if it's gonna be a direct sequel about Alice or somebody else. We'll see
when that book comes out and the summary comes out, if I'll pick that one up. I
might possibly but for the most part pretty disappointed by this. That's it
for this review. Let me know if you've read this book and what you thought
about it. I'd love to hear, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
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Review | The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert [CC]

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