★★★.5
Or maybe 2.5. OR maybe it's actually 3 stars. 3.5? I'm very conflicted by this book clearly

So what's going on here?
Alice and her mother, Ella, have lived their lives on the road, and on the run. Whenever they stay in one place for too long, bad luck seems too find them, occasionally even leading to the death of a loved one. Alice has never known why, and dreams of finding one place to call home. But mostly, she dreams of her elusive grandmother, author of a book of fairytales with a cult following, and the estate in the forest she lives in known as the Hazel Wood. Alice's mother, however, is adamant that Alice never meets her, and especially never reads her book. But when Ella is kidnapped by a character from the book, she must enlist the help of a friend and fan of the novel to find her, even if that means venturing into the dangerous world of fairytales that she never guessed was actually real, and finding out some hard truths about herself along the way.

What I loved
I absolutely adore this world, this is for sure one of my favourite worlds that I've ever experienced in a book. It gave me major Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire vibes, which is probably a top 5 favourite series of all time, so I was over the top happy about that. I would love it if Albert did novellas exploring the other fairy tale worlds that were hinted at in this book like McGuire does (if that's what the next book is about then im going to straight up DIE), or even a book of short stories, OR published Tales from the Hinterland as a separate novel. That would be cool as fuck. (Edit: THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING I'M HYPED). The world of The Hazel Wood is the only reason that I'm so conflicted with my rating, because I love it so much while I dislike a lot of other stuff about this book

What I didn't love
As much as I love this world and would love more books about it, I DESPISED the majority of the characters. I didn't mind Finch, and I liked the side characters from Hinterland (Janet, the Story Spinner, and the dude from the cafe mostly). Ella was alright I guess but she didn't really have a major role and I found her character to be rather underdeveloped. But my main issues lies with Alice. WOW I did not like her AT ALL. She was angry, arrogant, stuck up, and so god damn privileged that I almost DNF'd after that scene with Finch and the cop. I literally only kept with this book because of the world, so I'm desperately hoping that she won't have as much of a role in the next book. Please for the love of all that is good in the world, let the next book not centre on her so much. There are SO MANY other characters that it could be about, ones that we already know from this book or new ones all together. In a world where so many other worlds exist, I'm sure there's gotta be someone, ANYONE else, that The Night Country could focus. PLEASE

Ok I'm done ranting about how much I hate Alice now lmfao

There are also a couple things that left me sort of confused and asking questions at the end, things that didn't quite make sense or that I maybe missed (I listened to the audiobook and there is a very good possibility that I zoned out for a couple seconds on the bus and missed some vital information. But whatever). I won't go into detail about it because nothing is overly importantly and didn't really make me lower my rating by too much, especially considering there are going to be more books and she might answer those questions later. But yeah some confusion with world building stuff is present!!

Overall thoughts
Overall I can say that I enjoyed this book. I didn't love it, but I definitely liked it and it will read the next one. Probably not right away, since The Night Country comes out the same day as like a million other books that I want to read and will probably like more, but I'll read it eventually lmfao.

This was good! Not great, not spectacularly amazing, but good enough that I’ll read the sequel (eventually). I’m not really sure what it was, but something about it just didn’t fully grab me, you know I mean? It was interesting, I love the world, the side characters are fantastic (main characters less so), and that premise! *chef kiss* I’m very much here for the premise, and the plot took some twists that I genuinely wasn’t expecting, but something was just a little off. Can’t put my finger on it, but regardless I’m very glad that I read it!

This book wasn't bad, but I wouldn't call it good either. Maybe I'm biased but the TV show is much better. I found a lot of the things that happened to be silly and unnecessary, and also found the plot to be too slow. The characters are still pretty flat, but not as bad as in the first book.


2015 Reading Challenge: A book with a number in the title