The Night Country by Melissa Albert

You know things are bad when you think about them for a week and remove stars from your rating. Firstly, this is nothing personal to anyone... this is just how these books affected me. Books? Yes, that's right... I read "The Night Country" and "The Boy Who Didn't Come Home" by Melissa Albert which is the sequel to "The Hazel Wood" and an inbetween the novels story.

I rated the initial book a four out of five, which I now have decided that that was far too generous. "The Night Country" comes in at a 1.5 out of five stars (demoted from 2.5 stars) and "The Boy Who Didn't Come Home" went from a four out of five to three.

What worked for me: The story concept is interesting. The writing is fairly solid.

What didn't work for me: Everything else. I've never read a book where the part of the story I wanted to learn more about barely gets touched. In the first novel, I wanted the hinterlands and the stories developed. Didn't get it. The same was with "The Night Country". We keep skirting around what's truly interesting and I don't understand why. I cannot be the only one.

I know I swore to myself that I wouldn't compare anything with "The Starless Sea" by Erin Morgenstern, but I can't help it... both stories had doors into magical worlds. The difference here, is that with Morgenstern, we got to walk through them and live and with Albert, we got jagged little peaks.

"The Boy Who Didn't Come Home" is an inbetween novels story that focuses on Ellery Finch and what happens to him in the Hinterlands. I was more interested in this story but it was incomplete to me. The author rushed here and there... and the entire second book could have been this journey and would have given us what we wanted to see into this magical world.

Will I read any more books that come out in the Hazel Wood universe? I don't think so. Life is too short to read books that don't speak to you. Will I read more from this author otherwise? Yes, I'd love to give her another chance.