The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black Published by Little Brown (1.13.2015)
Genres: Urban Fantasy, Young Adult
Format: ARC, 324 pages
Source: ARCycling
Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.
Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.
At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.
Until one day, he does…
As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?
My thoughts
Ugh. Where do I start? I struggled through about 90% of this book. I’m thinking Holly Black books are maybe just not for me – I DNFed both Coldest Girl and White Cat. I wish I had DNFed this one too.
The pacing was painfully slow. There wasn’t much happening for the majority of this story, with nothing but intrigue to keep you going. Actually, it didn’t seem like there was any plot at all in this book. Nothing really happened until Hazel goes to the fae world, and that’s two hundred and freaking seventy pages in. That is a lot of pages of nothing. Too many for me! Holly Black has this habit of droning on and on, describing mundane things to ridiculous detail. I really don’t care what the character wears every single day or what she eats for every meal!
The very end was the only part of the book that I actually liked, and by then I was so damn bored that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have.
I also found the characters to be rather vapid, and I didn’t care about them at all. The only character I remotely liked was Severin because he intrigued me.
Only a week after reading this book I had already forgotten most of it. I had to go back through to remember the names and what happened at the end! All in all, this book was a waste of time for me. Notice I gave it 1.5 heartbeats – somewhere in between “I didn’t like it” and “it was ok” – only because the end in the fae world kind of made it better. If the whole book had been like that, I probably would have enjoyed it.
Overall Assessment
Plot: 2/5
Premise: 4/5
Writing style: 2/5
Originality: 3/5
Characters: 1/5
Pace: 1/5
Feels: 0/5
Cover: 4.5/5
Overall rating: 1.5/5
UGH, I totally don’t like it when the pacing of a book is really slow. It makes me wanna give up half way. :\ I’m sorry you didn’t like this book though. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s been on my TBR for a few months now. Maybe I should give it a try if I stumble upon it at the library.
Great review btw, and thanks for sharing your thoughts <3