The Hazel Wood

*I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway :)This book took soooooooo long to get to the point. The beginning feels like it is setting the reader up, letting us know what is going on, but also... doesn't. I still don't understand completely why the “bad luck” was following them around since some of those things didn't seem to relate. And then it takes quite a while for her mother to get taken and then most of the book is trying to understand: is the Hinderland real? What is it? What's going on? So, by the time the fantasy elements really come out to play the book is already halfway over – this is the point where I assumed we wouldn't see her mother again in this book... I won't say if I was right or not, I am trying to not spoil too much of this book. Many things also didn't make too much sense to me and while I was willing to forgive things since I thought the author was trying to make the book read like a fairy tale, it just didn't work. Some aspects of the book felt contradictory or worked...barely. I also still really want to know how Alice-Three-Time's story ends!!! Oh and the mystery, isn't really “solved” it just happens, so that is why I don't consider this a mystery. Actually, most things just happen in this book, Alice does nothing herself but walk through the book while everything happens for her. Quite irritating.Character-wise, Alice is super unlikeable. Right off the bat, that is just something I personally have a problem with. She isn't a nice person and she's selfish– seriously can't look beyond herself. The other characters I thought fell flat. Mostly likely, this is because Alice interrupts everyone and disregards their problems quickly (i.e. Finch explaining why she shouldn't have been a smart ass to the cop because Finch is African American and that situation could have gone hill very fast). I did make it through this though, so it wasn't all bad. > I was interested in what the Hinderland was and how Alice's grandmother wrote the story.>Finch honestly felt like a pretty normal person, except for how he reacted to Alice through 90% of the book. >The fairy tales!! I honestly waited the whole book to find out Alice-Three-Time's story ending and why the hell she is called Alice-Three-Times.... so negative we don't find out, but positive because these stories were so interesting. >sometimes the writing was engaging and interesting – I mean, I did finish it. There were times I was sucked in.So, do I recommend this? No. Honestly, I've already lowered it one star and the more I think about this book the more I want to bring it down to one star. Want a book about a girl involved in fairytales? Read [b:UnEnchanted 13402447 UnEnchanted (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale, #1) Chanda Hahn https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327819697s/13402447.jpg 18634320] instead. But, if someone is looking for something with gritty fairytales... I might direct them to this. I might might pick up book 1.5 if it is the all the fairytales that weren't told in this book AND THE END OF THAT DARN STORY!