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    The Hazel Wood: A Novel
    The Hazel Wood: A Novel
    The Hazel Wood: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Hazel Wood: A Novel

    Written by Melissa Albert

    Narrated by Rebecca Soler and James Fouhey

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    "Highly literary, occasionally surreal, and grounded by Alice's clipped, matter-of-fact voice, it's a dark story that readers will have trouble leaving behind. HIGH-DEMAND: the buzz for this debut is deafening..." Booklist, Starred Review

    From rising star Melissa Albert comes a fantastical story of mythic proportions.

    Welcome to The Hazel Wood—a fiercely stunning contemporary fantasy audiobook.

    *This program includes a bonus novella, The Boy Who Didn't Come Home, set in the world of The Hazel Wood and narrated by James Fouhey*

    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.

    Praise for The Hazel Wood:

    "The Hazel Wood starts out strange and gets stranger, in the best possible way...Albert seamlessly combines contemporary realism with fantasy, blurring the edges in a way that highlights that place where stories and real life convene...a captivating debut." — New York Times Book Review
    “The Hazel Wood will be your next obsession.” —Stephanie Garber, author of Caraval
    “Thoroughly, creepily captivating.” —Kristin Cashore, author of Graceling
    “This is one of the best books I've read in years.” —Jennifer Niven, author of All the Bright Places
    “A dream of a book I cannot recommend highly enough.” —Seanan McGuire, author of Every Heart a Doorway

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateJan 30, 2018
    ISBN9781427293541
    Author

    Melissa Albert

    Melissa Albert is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of the Hazel Wood series (The Hazel Wood, The Night Country, Tales from the Hinterland) and Our Crooked Hearts, and a former bookseller and YA lit blogger. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and included in the New York Times list of Notable Children’s Books. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

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    Reviews for The Hazel Wood

    4/5

    233 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      The audiobook itself was more like 5 stars, but the story like 3, so a four star!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book is great for fairytale lovers and mystery lovers :)
    • 3/5
      Need to read it again cause this was weird...lol. Not sure good or bad weird though.
    • 2/5
      The voice reading this book did a great job portraying, Alice. It was much easier to connect to her after listening to the audio for a bit, rather than try and make out her character on paper.

      I take issue with the book itself. The concept was GREAT and the characters were decent enough to have been able to carry the plot-however the storytelling/writing style absolutely KILLED any and every ounce of potential this book could've had. I don't believe Melissa Albert is a terrible writer, I just think she that not even she understood the point of the story and simply wrote it because she could.
    • 5/5
      You'll have to read it to understand but its up there in this level of books all on its own.
    • 5/5
      I listen to this book literally every month, I finish it, I listen to The Night Country, and then I start over. It's narrated beautifully, the storyline is amazing and the characters have depth and feeling. Please please pLEASE listen to this book, it's so good.
    • 5/5
      This book is sooooooo under hyped!!! !! ! ! !
    • 5/5
      Absolutely amazing!!! Couldn’t stop ... wish it ended differently but still. Amazing!!!
    • 5/5
      Buckle up, it’s gonna be a bumpy fairytale. Worth every second!!!
    • 5/5
      A wonderfully compelling, gripping, beautifully-written novel that is haunting and grim at times, but still has so much light. I quickly came to care about Alice and Finch, and Alice's mom Ella, and loved the story worlds and vivid imagination. At times I didn't like Alice's actions, but other times she won me over, and the emotional depth and inner knowledge as well as vivid imagination and gorgeous writing made me love this book so much.
    • 2/5
      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.” This is where the real plot starts.
      Let me just start by saying this is my opinion and my review based on what I’ve read.
      Characters
      Alice
      Alice, the main character.....my god so annoooyyyinnggg. She is an unlikable character made to be unlikable to be liked as a flawed character but I couldn't do it. She was so arrogant and selfish sometimes I just wanted to shout at her. Also the way she treated another person of color, a boy, was just plain ignorant and fucking stupid..Alice, honey, grow the fuck up.
      Writing Style
      The writing itself also seems to play on pretty over substance. Most of it doesn't make sense and it's overly descriptive in a way that benefits no one other than to further confuse the reader. I repeatedly wished that the writing would just say it how it was, instead of taking me on elaborate and flowery prose of endless rambling. The writing made it difficult for me to imagine anything, and I never found myself “wowed” by anything going on — and come on, it’s so easy to “wow” your audience, especially when you’re mixing in fairytale elements. But, I mean, I’m not saying this wasn’t original — so, at least it had that. The whole idea of a fictional storybook actually being written off of real characters that walk amongst us was pretty cool. This is the first book that has made me think that the author statements/praise on the back cover are completely made up after I finished reading it. I mean, unless I have a defect copy, the fact that Stephanie Garber, Karen Mcmanus, Seanan Mcguire AND Jennifer Niven all adored this is highly suspicious, because this story is a hot mess.
      Worst Part Of The Book
      Alice and Finch got stopped by a cop and he told her how he was uncomfortable around them and about his skin color and literally this white girl tells him to shut up and goes off about how he is super rich and has a ton of privilege....LIKE.....???? She was gonna run their car into a fucking tree because she got to pissed at this conversation and I was so fucking iritated I put the book down and drank a glass of water.


      A Positive
      An aspect of the book that I actually did enjoy was the stories, they were dark and compelling and you wanted to read them. This was the only time I was engrossed in the book. They were interesting enough to keep me going, but barely.

      Plot
      Reading this book reminded me of every time I have to untangle my headphones - it only becomes more and more of a mess until i get so frustrated and throw them across the room. I thought that if I continued reading, the plot would become more clear and make sense, but instead it became more muddled and absurd. Once I got past the halfway mark I just wished the novel would end already, and that’s never a good sign.

      Overall
      Well.... I finished it. At least I didn't dnf it so I'll give it that. Like I said earlier, I think this is a book you'll either love or hate. A lot of my friends and other people on goodreads loved this book, it's just a shame I didn't enjoy it as much as others. I honestly hope others will enjoy this much more than what I initially did. Okay, so this was not a book for me.