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.

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

My interest in this first began with it's title, "The Hazel Wood." From there, I was enchanted by the cover. I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but it was just so darn pretty. The complexities of the cover lighted my imagination and I knew that I had to know more.

I will be the first to admit that I never read the teaser and when I started reading this book, I had no idea where it would go. I had no idea how dark it would get. It delighted me to my soul.

This story tells of a girl, Alice Proserpine, and her mother Ella, the grand daughter and daughter of the mysterious cult-fairy tale writer are running from bad luck/curses.

You get a brief history of all of the places Ella and Alice lived over the years before settling in New York City.

After her grandmother passes we are engulfed in this massive mystery of very dark fairy tales and a journey that takes Alice and her friend Finch to upstate New York into the Hinterlands in search of the home that was left for her, The Hazel Wood.

We are given a few of the fairy tales in full and the rest are left to mystery (hopefully unraveled in the sequel, "The Night Country" that was released on January 7, 2020. I have my copy on hold with the Libby application through my local library. I still have about eight weeks to wait on that one, but I am very excited to see where Melissa Albert takes this story and these unique fairy tales.

I rated this book four stars out of five because I feel as though more/most of the time should have been spent in the Hinterlands, the half woods, and The Hazel Wood. Of the ten fairy tales they alluded to, only a couple were divulged. That, in all honesty, just wasn't enough.

I was shocked by the quality and darkness that surrounded the fairy tales and I cannot wait to get back into this world. It was much better than I expected it to be.