A review by thebooklovingpanda
Hazel and Gray by Nic Stone

2.0

This was an...interesting take on the 'Hansel and Gretel' story. I think I was hoping for some more recognisable callbacks of the original story, as this kind of felt like a more original plot with some aspects that were loosely reminiscent of the fairytale.

It was surprisingly dark and a little heavy (almost gratuitous?) on the sexual aspects for what I thought was going to be a YA novella. (To clarify, I'm not talking about the

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sex trafficking and paedophilic sexual predator

plotlines, as obviously that is inherently sexualised and always disturbing to read about.) For example, very shortly into the story it is revealed in no uncertain terms that

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Hazel and Gray have just had sex in the forest (no veiled allusions - I was reading about Hazel's "swollen lady bits"),

and it was a little jarring as I barely knew the characters at this point. We do learn a bit more about them before the

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later flashback to the on-page sex scene itself

, but it still felt weird. I also didn't enjoy reading in detail about the

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scant clothing that the underage girls working as sex slaves, including Hazel at one point, had to wear.

It might be just my brain expecting YA, but it confusingly felt a bit male-gaze-y.

The narration is a little hard to follow as it initially felt like multi POV but instead jumps around between characters, though this cleared up a bit once the POV characters weren't in the same scene. I did like the gradual revelation of how Hazel and Gray are connected, and while some of it was generally predictable, there were still a couple of surprises that kept my interest.