Word Nerd Review – The Hazel Wood – Melissa Albert
by Trisha Quezada

Sometimes bad luck is just bad luck. Sometimes it’s more than it seems. When you’re raised on fairy tales it’s impossible to tell the difference. Alice Proserpine has had bad luck follow her for her whole life. When her mysterious and reclusive grandmother, the author of a book of fairy tales called Tales from the Hinterland, dies, she and her mother think their bad luck is behind them. The Hinterland has other ideas. When her mother goes missing she is forced to wake up to a world she never knew existed.

The Hazel Wood is a fantastic debut novel by Melissa Albert. It’s truly captivating – making you long for this world where fairytales are more than fiction – but also unbelievable creepy. I couldn’t put it down and not just because it is creepy enough to give you nightmares. The twists and turns of the plot keep you guessing until the very end, but it’s written in such a way that you don’t want to try to guess the ending. You’ll be too enthralled by every minute of the story to want it to come to an end. The biggest disappointment when I finished it was that she hadn’t written others yet.