Review by tanisha1207 - Don't Let the Forest In

tanisha1207 's review for:

Don't Let the Forest In by CG Drews

3.5

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book is dripping in atmosphere, tangled in metaphor, and absolutely soaked in angst. If I had read it ten years ago, I probably would have made it my entire personality.

I went into this with some hesitation since horror isn’t my usual thing, but the psychological horror elements were really well done. I enjoyed the blurred lines between reality and delusion, the creeping sense of unease, and the way grief and trauma manifest as literal monsters. I loved the use of writing and art as an outlet for mental illness. The prose style is lyrical and poetic in a way that makes everything feel like a fever dream.

However, I also felt like the book sometimes leaned on unreliable narration and purple prose as a way to avoid clarity rather than enhance the story. The story is meandering in a way that sometimes feels messy, especially since this is a shorter book that requires a bit more focus.

The emotional beats felt overly familiar to me. I spent my teen years writing sad self-loathing boy x sad angry boy codependent dynamics in fanfic (how you doin, wolfstar), so the relationship at the heart of this story didn’t hit as hard as it might have if I’d read this a decade ago. It felt really self indulgent. I related to a lot of the struggles both main characters went through, but from a distant perspective since their emotions are really heightened and raw, which is fitting since they’re teenagers.

That said, I did really feel for these boys. The enmeshed, desperate way they loved each other was painful to read, and even though I saw the “big reveal” coming within the first 20 pages, the tragedy of it still sat heavy. The ending, while effectively gut-wrenching, felt ambiguous in a way that felt intentional but didn’t deliver enough impact. This is a book that will absolutely wreck the right reader. For me, it was a solid read.

I really wish this book included trigger warnings. This is a YA book, and I think the way it handles eating disorders and asexuality (especially through Andrew’s deeply self-loathing lens) could be harmful to younger readers without any pushback or framing from the narrative. I don’t necessarily think the story needed to challenge Andrew’s perspective, but an author’s note would have helped.

Trigger warnings: gore, violence, body horror, death, homophobia, internalized acephobia, eating disorders, self-loathing

Content Warnings