Reviews

I loved this book! It’s a great book for October if you’re in the mood for a creepy Gothic tale with realistic fantasy elements. If you enjoy stories such as Pan’s Labyrinth, I think you’ll enjoy this read! I devoured this story in a day and a half!

summerfjord's review against another edition

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dark mysterious slow-paced

4.0

twistedriver's review against another edition

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emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

sdeeim's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

starryeved's review against another edition

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3.0

Every story is a ghost story.

What I Expected: A folktale or fable about a dissolved marriage, in which the intrepid couple enter the creepy Night Wood on a whirlwind fantastical adventure.
What I Actually Got: A winding rabbit hole of a tale. Charles and Erin Hayden's dissolved marriage, rent by infidelities and the death of their daughter Lissa. A creeping story of horned kings and dark fables, of sacrifices and ciphers lost in the depths of Shakespeare, Dante, De Quincey, and more. Conspiracy upon conspiracy through old tomes and ancient lost beings.

Quite clearly I did not know what to expect of this.

What followed for us all?
You didn't always find the things you'd lost. Sometimes the wood swallowed you whole.

In the Night Wood was far bleaker and grittier, much more grounded in reality and philosophical than its premise suggests. In that very way it calls to you, like shadows from the depths. Dale Bailey's writing is lyrical and hypnotic, lulling the senses, perfectly fitting as he carves cyclical, intricate character studies on Charles and Erin's marriage and on the ghosts that haunt their day-to-day existence, veiled by the darkly enchanting promises of the Night Wood around them and the creeping manor left by their predecessor Caedmon Hollow.

Time was cyclical, life perpetually blooming out of the lees of the past.

Frankly, there is no other way I can describe it. If you take this as it is, it will not be what you expected, but it will rivet you in an entirely different way, drawing you further and further into the darkness with whispering promises.

In the Night Wood is yet another phantasmagoric read that delves into the primordial, raw bases of the fairy tales and myths we have come to love—that tells us that we are all but stories within one another, intertwining and overlapping with once upon a times, and that happily ever afters are not as brilliant as they seem. For at the end of the day, we end with this:

Maybe if there weren't really any happily ever afters to our once upon a times, there could at least be hard-won accommodation to the vicious world, a compromise at tale's end with bitterness and suffering.
Maybe.

m_elissa_m's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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