Book Review: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Title: The Darkest Part of the Forest
Author: Holly Black
Genre: Young Adult - Fantasy
Rating: 5/5
Pages: 336
Publication Date: January 13th, 2014

Plot (goodreads):
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?

Review:
This book. I'm not quite sure what to say about it without flailing wildly. It definitely confirmed my love for Holly Black and makes me want to use gifs (which I've never done in a review before). And this, actually, inspired me to pick up her whole Curse Workers series, which I'd owned for a while but hadn't had the time to get to (and makes me itch to reread Tithe, because I think I'd like it more now).

Anyway, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is The Darkest Part of the Forest. I love a faerie book, so when I learned this was one, I kind of immediately wanted to read it (which I did. I received a copy at a convention in August, LeakyCon, and started it as soon as I could - on the plane ride back).

I didn't finish it on the plane, but I was still in the mind set of: holy shit, I love it. And I ended up rereading it when it came out, going to the kick-off event of the book. And I'm glad I did, honestly, because it helped me write the rest of this review.

I loved the writing,  the characters, the atmosphere, the whole setting - the characters and that slight strangeness that should be felt in all books with fae (at least I feel). It's just strange and weird and... lovely. But I'm also saying that as someone who adores faerie books and, if you're not a fae person, this might not be the book for you. But - if you haven't tried any faerie books, you definitely should, and if you love them, well... I have a book for you.

You might of noticed I didn't really say much about the book, and that there isn't a lot given away by the plot itself - and I think that's the best way to go into this book. It surprised me, definitely, and I hadn't even heard that plot before I started it. Just knew it was about siblings and a faerie boy in a glass coffin - and I just loved that image itself. Of this faerie boy in the middle of the woods in a glass coffin scattered with leaves.

If you're curious about if you'll like the book or not, I definitely consider reading the first two pages or so, the description, because I adore it. I just finished rereading it a few days ago, and I already want to reread it again talking about it.

Now, before I hype the book more or fangirl more, I'm going to cut myself off. Faeries, brother and sister, strangeness, gorgeous writing.

If you've read it, however, I'd love to hear what you thought or your favorite scenes/such.

Series Review: The Spiderwick Chronicles

Series: The Spiderwick Chronicles
Author(s): Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Adventure (Middle-Grade)
Over-all series rating: 4/5
Number of Books: 5
Books in Series: (Goodreads links)
The Field Guide
The Seeing Stone
Lucinda's Secret
The Ironwood Tree
The Wrath of Mulgarath

Plot/Series information (no spoilers):
This is a series about these three kids, Mallory, Jason, and Simon, moving into a kind of creepy old house that's in the family, Aunt Lucinda's house, because their mom thinks it'll be good for them and it'll be financially easier on her.
Right away they kind of start noticing things are a little off, that there's some mystery.

The first books just barely introduce the fey mythology, but it gets more into it in the later books. All of these books are short, but that doesn't seem to take away from the story at all.

Review (no spoilers):
The three main characters in this book - Mallory, Jason, and Simon - are perfect main characters. They're young, even for middle-grade, and they're a little odd. I loved them pretty much right away with how Mallory fences and Simon has his weird pet collection, Jason misses the city and everything from before. And they felt very real and very likeable/relatable.

They're good main characters to watch how this unfolds, because, at first, two of them don't believe their brother about what's going on. They have an overall good relationship, though, which grows and changes through the series.

The world in these books is something I adore. Reading them you also feel like the fey world is ten or twenty times bigger then we're shown, and I really enjoyed that. You meet a lot of different faeries/creatures over the course of the series, learn about them as the kids do.

What I did is I sat down and read this whole series in one day for the Bout of Books read-a-thon. And I thought I'd read them quickly, but they're just so easy to read, and you want to read the next one, so I was surprised at how quickly I read these. And when I finished the last one, I wanted to know what was going to happen next with the kids. I did think, though, that it wrapped up very well.

Overall, I'd recommend this series to any kid who likes fantasy with fey and anyone older who likes it, too. It is middle-grade, keep that in mind, but that doesn't change how likable the characters or how good the world building is.  The main point is I really loved this series. It was cute and fun, not incredibly in-depth or dark, like some things I read, but a nice break from that kind of thing and a fantastic read over all.