Unfortunately, this was not one of my favorite reads. Although, based on the subject matter it should have been the very book I had been dreaming of! It had everything I want most in a book: a female heroine, some witty dialogue, fairies, folklore, a certain amount of spookiness. Ultimately though, it just fell flat. There were parts of the book where I had to force myself to slog on through and moments where I just felt characters were under-cooked.
To me, it was as if the entire book was like one of those television episodes where suddenly at the peak of it all, the person just wakes up and all the craziness they had experienced was just a passing memory.
Here are my main issues...
1. I believe Holly Black set out to create a strong female character who was many different parts bad-ass (think sword wielding evil fairy killer)- but mixed it with a girl who has no sense of self, poor interpersonal boundaries and frankly an extremely one-dimensional personality. This mix is what lead to the character's demise in my eyes - as there was no visible growth of the character, no "transcendental moment" and really not enough background to fully determine why she had this fragile ego-state. Hazel... the harsh truth is... I could not root for you. I could not identify with you and most importantly: I COULD NOT BELIEVE YOU. If I cannot believe that you (Hazel) exist or that your personality/person has developed this way and would act this way - then what does that say about this character?
2. Second, the novel's setting and foundation give the author the ability to really up the creepiness factor and well, you just... don't. "
The Darkest Part of the Forest" - it is in the darn title -but are readers ever truly led there, are we ever given an edge of delicious fear? Instead we are treated to glossed over background scenes of local kids out partying on a glass coffin in the moonlight. Do we ever feel like there were eyes on the characters or leaves are rustling or footsteps being followed - no! How is this NO?! How is the "most fear inducing" character in the whole damn book a tree?! Meanwhile in the middle of the book at a fairy revel there are characters who could make for nightmares, trolls who gnash bones, red caps who dye their clothes with fresh blood. There is even a part where Hazel gets caught by redcaps and is about to have her blood drained, and it is the most vanilla passage ever about her using the body beside her to climb up the tree untie herself and run (there wasn't even a chase!).
3. The author alludes to some dark part of Ben's musical talents. She mentions briefly the impacts it had on his music teacher in Philadelphia, but... honestly the author really doesn't. That is the problem with cool literary ideas, the author knows what they are and they must be amazing inside their minds, but they have no idea how to properly get it down on paper so that readers can share in it. I have no idea from beginning to end why Ben is so frightened of what he can do - to the point that he breaks his own hand. It just felt like "Oh no!! I have all this amazing talent, I can play emotions and I can make music out of thin air. This is too much, let me break my hand into a million pieces and never play again but listen to the radio non-stop forever."
4. Hazel and Ben's parents - seriously this was the most annoying part. If you are going to create hands off parents - then they should be hands off - they should be aloof and in a way cold and removed. If you are going to create sensitive artistic parents then create them. Honestly, they were so wishy-washy I can 't even say, and was there even a Father? I finished the book yesterday and I honestly can't recall. If art and the making of art was the very essence of their being, then there should have been more anger, more frustration, and more sadness coming from them when it came to the loss of Ben's gift. Instead they were like background scenery and I could not understand their roll at all. At one point they are borderline neglectful of their children leaving them to starve and play Russian roulette in the woods behind their home, and the next they are the moral compass and voice of justice speaking out against townspeople who want to send a teenager into certain danger to save themselves.
I was overall disappointed with the book. I felt like it was a decent rough outline of a story that could have been great if it were edited and fleshed out more. It needed more direction, the characters needed more driving them. It just needed MORE. It was a shame since I can remember enjoying Holly Black's other work "
Tithe".
