A review by eesh25
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

5.0

4.5 Stars

Wow so... I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would. I thought it would be another okay read, but this was awesome.

This book is set in the town of Fairfold in which Human and fae exist side by side, and there is glass coffin in the woods in which a prince has been asleep for centuries. Hazel and her brother are two of the humans in the town and one day, when the prince suddenly wakes up, they're both swept up in the lives of monsters and kings and princes.

And that's all I wanna say about the plot because anything else might ruin the fun. And this is book definitely fun after you get past the first quarter, which isn't as interesting.

The book was engaging, I liked the writing more than I did in Tithe, I loved the story and the setting the author created. I even liked the characters who I was initially iffy about. What I liked most, though, was how it sometimes took me off guard, in a 'pleasant surprise' sort of way. 'Pleasantly surprise' is, in fact, a pretty accurate description of how I felt about the book as a whole.

It had a very mystical and mysterious tone to it that kept me interested; and Holly Black has a kind of poetic writing style that worked really well for the town of Fairfold and for all the main characters, neither of whom were very normal.

I also couldn't be more glad that this was a standalone because, while I might enjoy reading more about this world, I'm happy that the story concluded in this one book; concluded very well too. There aren't nearly enough Fantasy standalones so it was really nice to read one.

The book isn't perfect though. It has a few flaws, some of which I could overlook, like the slightly tame beginning and Ben's prince-obsession thing that he had going on. I mean, the guy could literally get you to dance your way off a cliff with a song, I think that gives him permission to be peculiar. There is, however, one thing that I can't quite ignore.

Hazel, at one point, does some thing because of which I deemed her TSTL, aka 'too stupid to live', but that was her only moment of such stupid. Other times, she was okay, smart even. Which told me that the reason for Hazel's behaviour was the author.

You see, what Hazel did was very important for the plot to move on, so the author needed to put it there. And had she had a better reason, there would have been no problem. Unfortunately, the author did not give a good reason.

But after that point, things were great. I really enjoyed reading the book and I'm looking forward to reader other works of this author.

I highly recommend checking this book out. It's really good.