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A review by ravensandlace
Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews
3.5
Title: Don’t Let the Forest In
Author: CG Drews
Genre: Horror
Format: eARC
Series: NA
Star Rating: 3.5 stars
tw: blood/gore, body horror, panic attacks, grief, eating disorder, bullying, self-harm, child abuse, homophobia, death
A special thank you goes to Netgalley and MacMillian for providing me with a copy of this book. Please know that this does not influence my rating or thoughts on the book itself.
I have been following CG Drews since I first started my book review journey. Their reviews inspired me and I wanted to be a reviewer just like them. The way they wrote their reviews was so well done and I always looked forward to the days they posted. When I heard that they were getting a book published, I was beyond excited! Then when I found out they were releasing a horror book, I knew I needed to get my hands on it.
Anyway. Enough fangirling. While I enjoyed this book, one of the biggest problems I had with this book was the writing. The writing was very flowery. I usually enjoy that style of writing in the beginning but after a while, it starts to wear on me and I tend to get very confused about what is going on in the book. While, at first, I enjoyed it, after a while it started to get in the way of the plot. Especially toward the end. I started to get pretty confused about what was going on. I have a theory about what happened but I truly don’t know what was going on. But that could be the point of the book. There is a lot of mental illness representation in the book, so in a way, you never know what is truly going on because the characters themselves don’t seem to know what is going on either.
One thing that stuck out to me, was that this book reminded me of a very dark version of Inkheart. The main character, Andrew, is a writer, and his best friend, Thomas, is an artist. Thomas has been drawing Andrew’s stories and the monsters in them. Those monsters have been coming to life. So you can see why I would get Inkheart from that if you know what the premise of Inkheart is. That’s what drew me to this story.
Another thing that was incredibly well done was Andrew’s anxiety. I have anxiety but wow, Andrew’s anxiety makes mine look like I just have casual worries. At times, the anxiety started to get to me but then I remembered that I also have anxiety and I’m sure it wears on people that love me every once in a while. It was starting to make me super anxious. I just wanted to give the boy a big hug. He needed one desperately.
Overall, I did enjoy his book quite a bit despite some of the complaints I had. It certainly is the perfect book for the upcoming spooky season. It’s incredibly dark and pretty bloody with quite a bit of gore, which surprised me. Andrew and Thomas have an interesting but volatile, bordering on toxic relationship. If you can get past the pretty descriptive and prosy language, then I think this would be a great book for a lot of you.