The Hazelwood by Melissa Albert

I have heard so much hype about this book, but sadly it isn't worth the hype. I remember seeing this book everywhere on bookstagram last year. I must have picked up this book over thirty times in bookstores just to read the book description. I can tell you that this book was extremely basic.

Alice grew up with her mother, and they never stayed long in a town before her mother would uproot them and move them away. Alice was always curious about her grandmother, Althea. Her grandmother was a famous author, she wrote the book 'The Tales of the Hinterland', but no matter how hard she tried, Alice could never get her hands on this book. Or get her mother to tell her about Althea. Soon she became friends with a kid, Finch, at school. He happened to be an obsessed fan of her grandmothers. He agrees to help her track down the book.

I thought it curious that in one of her grandmother's stories, "Alice three times," that the character was also named Alice. It turns out the Hinterland is real, and they kidnapped Alice's mother. I thought the plot was pretty intriguing, but the characters themselves were boring. Alice sounded like such a bitch. She was rude to Finch, she was mean to her 'stepsister,' and she was pretty mean to her mother, but she justified it that 'she had to be the adult in their relationship.' The characters were underdeveloped, and one dimensional.

That being said, it was an interesting book to listen to on my commute to university. I'm glad I didn't purchase a physical copy of this book. There was zero world building, and this book is almost like a knock-off version of Alice in Wonderland. Except Alice is all grown up, and it's set in the present day. I really don't understand the hype that was around this book. I think that compared to the YA books out there when this came out that it is pretty different, it feels very contemporary in the way it was written yet it is set in a kind of fantasy world. I wish with this book that the author had gone all the way and made a real 'Hinterland,' describe it to me, give me some characters that I can care about. Sadly this book fell flat for me, and I can say I would have been fine with this book if I had skipped it.