Review of The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

The Darkest Part of the Forest

By Holly Black

Publication date: January 13, 2015

Little, Brown, 328 pages

Source: Purchased

"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?"  

- Goodreads.com description

The short of it:

Imaginative story with a crazy-awesome twist, but the romances are kind of "meh." 

The long of it:

When I read my first Holly Black book in ninth grade, I was fascinated in that horror movie, "it's too terrifying to look away" sort of way. I had picked up Tithe because a) the title word looked cool and I didn't know what it meant, which was impressive considering my impressive vocabulary, and b) I had just read A Midsummer Night's Dream in school and was going crazy for fairy stories.

Tithe took me by storm. Shakespeare's fairies were no angels, but Black's faeries were just plain wicked. And there was this gripping, destructive chemistry between main characters Kaye and Roiben that kept you glued to the pages. Cuddled up in bed, hiding beneath the blankets, I read Tithe in one go.

Which is why when I saw The Darkest Part of the Forest on the shelf at Barnes & Noble, its jacket promising "new love," I had to have it. I even got the signed copy. Anything for another toxic, yet not sappy or annoying (shout-out to Twilight, I know we're all thinking it) romance.

I have to say that in that regard, and pretty much only that regard, I was a little disappointed. The Darkest Part of the Forest had Tithe's same horror-movie appeal, but the love stories (yes, plural) felt a little underdeveloped. They both just moved so fast as to seem shallow and insubstantial. 

Bad stuff aside, Holly Black's writing is as lovely as ever, and the faeries as clever, wicked, and magical. TDPF's world was still just as dangerously beautiful and bizarre as Tithe's, and the story of the boy in the coffin was a nice twist to an old fairy tale. I don't think the jacket description does any justice to the main character's story. Hazel is stuck on the seriously cool bad side of a bargain with the fae. In fact, I wish more of the book was focused on that, instead of the sophomoric romances. The cool part was just too short! Hazel figured out her problem too quickly.    

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars