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A review by lyakimov
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
4.0
This book strongly grew on me as I read it. Once the big twist happened at a little past the halfway mark (which I DID NOT see coming), I had an immense appreciation for the setup of the novel. I did not like it that much in the beginning but it got WEIRD as it went on and I really liked it.
Kudos to Holly Black because it seems like it would be VERY DIFFICULT to write this book. Even though it was pretty short, the amount of backstory and information and world building fit in was INSANE.
I really enjoyed Holly Black touching on benign neglect. The way that Hazel and Ben were raised really affected how they saw the world and it is something not commonly included in YA books.
I also really enjoyed the twist. The whole Night Hazel vs. Day Hazel thing SHOCKED me. I thought it was really insane how the twist brought all the weird random stuff together into a really interesting story.
I liked the two relationships, but I wish they could have been fleshed out a little bit more. It was a heavy-plot, 300 page standalone novel, so it is not surprising that the romances were not fleshed out as much as they could have been, but they were still developed a lot more than you would think. That was ambitious of Holly Black to include two romances inside of an extremely plot dense novel.
In the beginning, I didn’t really like the story because it is just so HEAVY with an immense amount of world building so it was hard to get through the first half of the book, but after the halfway mark it was a total page turner and I enjoyed it!
Kudos to Holly Black because it seems like it would be VERY DIFFICULT to write this book. Even though it was pretty short, the amount of backstory and information and world building fit in was INSANE.
I really enjoyed Holly Black touching on benign neglect. The way that Hazel and Ben were raised really affected how they saw the world and it is something not commonly included in YA books.
I also really enjoyed the twist. The whole Night Hazel vs. Day Hazel thing SHOCKED me. I thought it was really insane how the twist brought all the weird random stuff together into a really interesting story.
I liked the two relationships, but I wish they could have been fleshed out a little bit more. It was a heavy-plot, 300 page standalone novel, so it is not surprising that the romances were not fleshed out as much as they could have been, but they were still developed a lot more than you would think. That was ambitious of Holly Black to include two romances inside of an extremely plot dense novel.
In the beginning, I didn’t really like the story because it is just so HEAVY with an immense amount of world building so it was hard to get through the first half of the book, but after the halfway mark it was a total page turner and I enjoyed it!