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A review by lostlenore_
The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert
1.0
I 'm very conflicted about this book. In all honesty, it had way more trigger warnings than I ever could have guessed and I didn't appreciate how they were not part of the blurb. My negative reviews stem part from how unprepared I was to read this book at this point in my life and how poor execution it had.
Please make sure you don't read ahead as there will be spoiler tagging with uses of the word "suicide" and "anger issues" throughout. So, please proceed with care.
I am not a reader who will post an overtly negative review on Goodreads. I don't want to insult the author and their work at all but writing a book that completely neglects and disrespects mental health and the depiction of black people in fiction has completely triggered me in leaving an honest review about all the reasons why I didn't like this book.
The premise is very captivating as there are horrific fairytales in a separate universe which, if you enter, you might lose your mind or die. First tick: cliched and overused trope of a creepy setting that completely stigmatizes people with mental health issues.
The heroine suffers from anger issues up to the point that she almost kills herself and the male romance interest (who's black, but the relevance of this will come in handy in a second) in a street accident. She literally mistreats him and threatens him she will kill him if she doesn't do what she says. Second tick: people with anger issues should be portrayed as multi-layered people that suffer, they're not just volcanoes ready to erupt.
The heroine completely thinks something else and does something else--she's very aggressive but her voice comes off as that of a traumatized child. Her character arc is completely inconsistent and it is being bypassed by the author to glorify a. the horror worldbuilding b. the plot points.
This leads us to the first trigger warning word. There is a plot point in the story where the heroine is called to kill herself because of the storyline and one particular horror fairytale. Killing yourself inside a particular narrative, means that you open a door to a place which is bleak and lonely, and out of this world. Killing yourself basically opens doors to other realms. Third tick: referring to suicide as a plot technique to open other doors is completely disprespectful towards people who suffer from it. When you want to insert such a topic in your book, you have to be delicate, kind and sensitive. This was what upsetted me the most and why I often wanted to stop reading the book. I cannot tolerate works that don't take into consideration other people's stories and mental health.
Fourth and final tick: the male romance interest is the only black character who is being constantly mentioned as a pivotal key character in the first 15 chapters out of the 30 chapters of the book (it might be even more) but he's killed (literally/figuratively, doesn't matter in this context) only to be brought back again within two pages later on and being dismissed within two paragraphs. It's not enough that this character never had his own character arc and only existed to further the plot but it's the way this whole technique has been consistently used in the media to undermine black people.
Do I recommend this book? Well, if you're really into horror, grotesque things with edgy staff that are there just for shock and disturbance for not another reason, perhaps you might want to read it.
But make sure you do have in mind that this work is problematic at its best and disrespectful at its worst.
Please make sure you don't read ahead as there will be spoiler tagging with uses of the word "suicide" and "anger issues" throughout. So, please proceed with care.
I am not a reader who will post an overtly negative review on Goodreads. I don't want to insult the author and their work at all but writing a book that completely neglects and disrespects mental health and the depiction of black people in fiction has completely triggered me in leaving an honest review about all the reasons why I didn't like this book.
The premise is very captivating as there are horrific fairytales in a separate universe which, if you enter, you might lose your mind or die. First tick: cliched and overused trope of a creepy setting that completely stigmatizes people with mental health issues.
The heroine suffers from anger issues up to the point that she almost kills herself and the male romance interest (who's black, but the relevance of this will come in handy in a second) in a street accident. She literally mistreats him and threatens him she will kill him if she doesn't do what she says. Second tick: people with anger issues should be portrayed as multi-layered people that suffer, they're not just volcanoes ready to erupt.
The heroine completely thinks something else and does something else--she's very aggressive but her voice comes off as that of a traumatized child. Her character arc is completely inconsistent and it is being bypassed by the author to glorify a. the horror worldbuilding b. the plot points.
This leads us to the first trigger warning word. There is a plot point in the story where the heroine is called to kill herself because of the storyline and one particular horror fairytale. Killing yourself inside a particular narrative, means that you open a door to a place which is bleak and lonely, and out of this world. Killing yourself basically opens doors to other realms. Third tick: referring to suicide as a plot technique to open other doors is completely disprespectful towards people who suffer from it. When you want to insert such a topic in your book, you have to be delicate, kind and sensitive. This was what upsetted me the most and why I often wanted to stop reading the book. I cannot tolerate works that don't take into consideration other people's stories and mental health.
Fourth and final tick: the male romance interest is the only black character who is being constantly mentioned as a pivotal key character in the first 15 chapters out of the 30 chapters of the book (it might be even more) but he's killed (literally/figuratively, doesn't matter in this context) only to be brought back again within two pages later on and being dismissed within two paragraphs. It's not enough that this character never had his own character arc and only existed to further the plot but it's the way this whole technique has been consistently used in the media to undermine black people.
Do I recommend this book? Well, if you're really into horror, grotesque things with edgy staff that are there just for shock and disturbance for not another reason, perhaps you might want to read it.
But make sure you do have in mind that this work is problematic at its best and disrespectful at its worst.