The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert

Title: The Bad Ones

Author: Melissa Albert

Publisher: Flatiron Books 2024

Genre: YA Horror

Pages: 400

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 52 Book Club - Omniscient Narrator; Library Love

Where I Got It: Library

In the course of a single winter’s night, four people vanish without a trace across a small town.

Nora’s estranged best friend, Becca, is one of the lost. As Nora tries to untangle the truth of Becca’s disappearance, she discovers a darkness in her town’s past, as well as a string of coded messages Becca left for her to unravel. These clues lead Nora to a piece of local lore: a legendary goddess of forgotten origins who played a role in Nora and Becca’s own childhood games. . . .

An arresting, crossover horror fantasy threaded with dark magic, The Bad Ones is a poison-pen love letter to semi-toxic best friendship, the occult power of childhood play and artistic creation, and the razor-thin line between make-believe and belief.

Such a disappointment. I loved Albert’s Hazelwood series and was hoping for more dark fantasy. This one started very very slow and failed to go anywhere for too many pages. Once we finally kick the plot into gear, the horror doesn’t deliver like I had hoped. It’s very lackluster. And don’t get me started on the “romance” sections. I just couldn’t buy those two characters being together and didn’t care what happened to them. Overall, I found myself being extremely bored throughout this book.

Next up on the TBR pile:

Tales for the Hinterland by Melissa Albert

Title: Tales from the Hinterland (Hazel Wood #3)

Author: Melissa Albert

Publisher: Flatiron Books 2021

Genre: YA Fantasy

Pages: 240

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Currently Reading - Makes Me Feel Cozy

Before The Hazel Wood, there was Althea Proserpine’s Tales from the Hinterland...

Journey into the Hinterland, a brutal and beautiful world where a young woman spends a night with Death, brides are wed to a mysterious house in the trees, and an enchantress is killed twice―and still lives.

Perfect for new readers and dedicated fans alike, Melissa Albert's Tales from the Hinterland features full-page illustrations by Jim Tierney, foil stamping, two-color interior printing, and printed endpapers.

Finally we get the amazing stories that created the basis for The Hazel Wood. All those dark tales from the Hinterlands are collected into one beautiful volume. It might sound strange to put this volume under my “Makes Me Feel Cozy” challenge, but dark fairy tales are my cozy reads. I love curling up for a cup of tea and a cozy blanket and falling into these strange tales. I must buy my own copy of this soon! I loved every single story, but I do have my favorites. I love the whimsy (until it’s not) of “The Clockwork Bride” and the utter devastation of “Alice-Three-Times.” “The House Under the Stairwell” actually scared me a bit. The imagery is so incredibly vivid that I felt like I was traveling the stairwell to the underworld. Albert does a delightful job in immersing the reader into these tales. I loved it!

The Hazel Wood

• #1 The Hazel Wood

• #2 The Night Country

• #3 Tales from the Hinterland

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Night Country by Melissa Albert

Title: The Night Country (Hazel Wood #2)

Author: Melissa Albert

Publisher: Flatiron Books 2020

Genre: YA Fantasy

Pages: 352

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Library

In The Night Country, Alice Proserpine dives back into a menacing, mesmerizing world of dark fairy tales and hidden doors of The Hazel Wood. Follow her and Ellery Finch as they learn The Hazel Wood was just the beginning, and that worlds die not with a whimper, but a bang.

With Finch’s help, Alice escaped the Hinterland and her reclusive grandmother’s dark legacy. Now she and the rest of the dregs of the fairy tale world have washed up in New York City, where Alice is trying to make a new, unmagical life. But something is stalking the Hinterland’s survivors—and she suspects their deaths may have a darker purpose. Meanwhile, in the winking out world of the Hinterland, Finch seeks his own adventure, and—if he can find it—a way back home...

Oh Yes! We finally get a followup to The Hazel Wood! I loved diving back into the world of the weird and the wonderful even if most of the story was set in New York City. I always gravitate to the slightly dark fantasy stories and this is no exception. Alice is good character, but I was really here for Ellery’s story. Oh so good! I’m glad we got answers to a lot of the questions posed in the first book. I look forward to next year’s release of Hinterland tales. It’s going to be oh so good!

Next up on the TBR pile:

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Title: The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)

Author: Melissa Albert

Publisher: Flat Iron Books 2018

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 359

Rating: 5/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Reading Assignment; Share-a-Tea; Seasonal Series - Someone Travels

Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away—by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began—and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.

I've been waiting for this book to come off hold at the library. I've heard such good things about this volume. A dark fairy tale sounds right up my alley! Thankfully this book delivered on an amazingly creepy story with great characters and full of twists and turns. It took me awhile to move through this book not because it was bad but because I savored every paragraph. For most of the book I was a bit unclear as to whether the events I was reading were real or in some weird dream state. Sounds bad, but I loved it! I loved the questioning and dream-like state that most of the books existed in. Loved it!

Next up on the TBR pile: