Book of the Week

This week, I started The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert. It follows a girl named Alice. Alice and her mother have spent their lives running from the bad luck that has attached itself to them. Ella Alice's mother wants to be as far away from the Hazel Wood as she can. The Hazel Wood is the place where Ella was raised. Ella's mother, Alice's grandmother, was a fairytale author. Not the normal happy go lucky ones that we know and hear when we are children, but the kind grimmer than Grimm's Fairy Tales themselves. Ella has never let Alice read her stories. The only time she ever got a glimpse of them was when she sneakily looked at a page while her mother was in another room. It was the story "Alice Three Times". It started by saying how Alice was born with the blackest of eyes that even made the nurses run afraid. Alice only had time to read the first sentence before her mother came in to reprimand her. 

Before they knew it, the fairy tale world that enraptured Alice's grandmother, Hinterland, started to catch up with them. While Alice was working at a cafe, she saw the face of the man who kidnapped her when she was little. The strange part was that it seemed like he hadn't aged a day since then. She tried to approach him, but he vanished, only leaving a feather, a comb and a bone. A day after this happens, when she gets home from school, she finds the apartment empty. Her mother, step-father, and step-sister are nowhere to be found. In her room, there was a note left on her pillow. That meant someone had been there, in her room. She only had one other person she could contact, Ellory Finch. Finch is a kid who goes to the same private school as Alice, he is a human oddity. He is also an enormous Althea Proserpine fan, and Alice hates fans of her grandmother. But he does come in handy because he remembers the stories in Althea's book, which will help her in the long run.

Ellory Finch answers on the first ring and tells Alice to come over to discuss everything thoroughly. On the way back to Alice's apartment, they see a girl from Althea's book, Twice Killed Catherine who sucks someone's life force from their body in a plight to keep her youth. They escape without Catherine noticing them, but only just. When they finally arrive at Alice's apartment, her step-dad is there, with a gun and he points it at her, he is eventually calmed down by Audrey, Alice's step-sister. Audrey tells them that they were taken by the Hinterland, they were released but Ella had to stay. Alice was banished from ever coming back to the apartment. After that, the set foot on a journey to rescue Ella from Hinterland. She finds that the fairytales may not be tales themselves, but very real. 

This book made the part of me who wanted fairytales to be real, shrivel away. It is not as amazing as you think it would be. There are so many different ways that they are portrayed and you never know which ones could be brought to fruition if your wish came true. So far while reading, I am fascinated with the world-building, as well as character development. You can see how Alice slowly but surely becomes Alice Three Times, it's frightening. All in all, being halfway done, I can't wait to see if Alice successfully rescues her mother or if she fails and succumbs to the Hinterland.

P.S: I think I am going to make this a weekly series where I tell you about the book I am reading at the time.

I'll keep you updated. 

-Michelle