textbook$ The Hazel Wood A Novel Free Online

textbook$ The Hazel Wood: A Novel Free Online
textbook$ The Hazel
Wood: A Novel Free
Online
Description
Amazon.com My favorite books, especially those that lurk in well-trod genres like young adult
fantasy, are those tales that sink a grappling hook in your chest and drag you through a maze of
plot twists and surprises until you're hollowed out and yet supremely satisfied at the final page.
The Hazel Wood, a creepy, abrasive, and marvelous debut novel, does just that. Teenager Alice
knows fairy tales aren't real, though they certainly have affected her own life: Decades ago her
grandmother penned a slim volume of brutal fairy tales set in the fictional Hinterland and then
promptly shut herself off from the world in her hidden estate. Alice and her mother have been on
the road ever since, rarely staying in one place for more than a few months. But when Alice's
mother disappears, taken by people who bear a nightmarish resemblance to the characters in her
grandmother's stories, Alice turns to Hinterland superfan and sorta-friend Ellery Finch to help her
track down her mother and her grandmother's long-lost estate. Alice blazes with a rage and a
grace that spurs her and the reader through the weird and brambly paths that lead to the truth
behind her grandmother's dark stories and Alice's own childhood. Mesmerizing and menacing,
The Hazel Wood rings with a voice and an authenticity driven by a talented author who distills into
storytelling magic the moments of power and helplessness spawned by the realization that the
world is not as we imagined it to be. —Adrian Liang, Amazon Book Review Read more Gr 9
Up—Alice Proserpine's mother Ella was raised on fairy tales amid the cultlike fandom surrounding
the release of Tales from the Hinterland, a collection of grim fairy tales that, in the 1980s, briefly
made Alice's grandmother Althea Proserpine a celebrity. Instead of fairy tales, Alice has highways
as she and her mother constantly move around hoping to outrun their eerie bad luck—something
that seems much more likely when they learn that Althea has died alone on her estate known as
The Hazel Wood. Everything isn't as it seems, and soon after, Alice's mother is kidnapped, leaving
nothing except a warning for Alice to stay away from The Hazel Wood. The teen reluctantly enlists
her classmate and not-so-secret Hinterland fan Ellery Finch, who may or may not have ulterior
motives for helping, to share his expertise on the fairy tales. The path to the Hazel Wood leads
Alice straight into the story of her family's mysterious past. Albert's standalone fantasy debut has a
narration in the vein of a world-weary noir detective who happens to be a teenage girl.
Resourceful, whip-smart, and incredibly impulsive, Alice also struggles with her barely contained
rage as circumstances spiral out of her control. Her singular personality largely excuses the lack of
context for much of her knowledge and cultural references that hearken more to a jaded adult than