Not Everything is as it Seems

 

Kathryn Phillips

“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”

Seventeen-year-old Alice Prosepine and her mother, Ella, have been living on the road their entire lives in an attempt to escape the terrible luck that seems to follow them around wherever they go. But when Alice receives a letter telling her that Alice’s estranged grandmother Althea Prosepine, the author of a famous cult-classic collection of dark fantasy stories called The Hinterland has died alone on her estate, Alice learns how bad her luck can get. After her mother mysteriously disappears, leaving behind nothing but an excerpt from The Hinterland, Alice must reluctantly team up with an Althea Prosepine superfan, Ellery Finch, and travel to her grandmother’s estate to find Ella. The two soon realize that Althea’s fairy tales might be more fact than fantasy.

The main reason I loved The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert was the characters. They’re extremely well-written, with realistic aspirations, personalities, and flaws. My favorite character, Ellery Finch, has the beginning quote tattooed on his arm. Finch is described as, “almost as short as [Alice] and skinny, with a crackling energy that followed him like an aura.” On the surface Finch is just an enthusiastic fan who wants to tag along with Alice on an adventure, but there’s a darkness that seems to be brewing under the surface. Alice says his “eyes blanked out to zero when he wasn’t smiling or laughing, and almost nobody smiled and laughed as much as he did.” These descriptions pull you into the book and make you want to know more about the characters.

Another great character in the book is Althea Prosepine. Although Alice doesn’t actually meet her until very late in the book, she’s a constant presence in the back of your mind throughout the entire story. One of my favorite quotes in the book describes Althea like this: “When I get her on the phone, her voice is as alluring as her most famous photo, the one with the ring and the cigarette. I ask if I can come talk to her in person, and her laugh is hot whiskey on ice. ‘You’d get lost on the way to finding me,’ she says. ‘You’d need breadcrumbs, or a spool of thread.’” The author sprinkles in little details about Althea, how Ella reacts when Alice asks about her, the mysterious deaths of her ex-husbands, her pointed, confident expression in photos, that make you want to meet her. But again, there’s a dark side that’s hinted at. No one has seen Althea or the inside of her estate in years. All of the characters and the way they’re described emphasize a theme in the book that not everything is as it seems.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. Although it was confusing at times, the detailed characters pulled you back in and made you feel like you were in the story, on their journey with them. I would definitely recommend reading The Hazel Wood.