Tuesday 15 December 2015

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black Review

Hey book lovers! So as promised, I am now back with another book review. I just finished this book, and I decided to do a review on it. This review will be different from the usual reviews that I always do, I will be putting a spoiler review at the end of my non-spoiler review part of this book. However, no worries, I will be putting a really big warning just to warn you guys from getting spoiled if you haven't read this book yet. 

I give this book about 4/5 stars

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they’re destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she’s found the thing she’s been made for.

Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries’ seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.


At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointed as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.


Until one day, he does…


As the world turns upside down, Hazel tries to remember her years pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?


Published on : February 5th 2015 by Indigo

Review:
This book was really good, let's be honest here. However, there are just some parts which I didn't really enjoy, but I will get to that later. When I was reading this book, I really want to continue this book, but for some reason, I didn't have any motivation to push through this book, it was a real struggle. I had to go to a cafe just to sit down for hours in order to push through it and try to finish it in one sitting, because I know, I KNOW that I won't even finish it even if I read it for 10 years.

What I enjoyed about this book:
The way the whole mystery was revealed bit by bit in the book. (Don't worry, the next information I'm giving away is said in the first few chapters, so it's not considered a spoiler!) 
The part where there was this acorn found inside Hazel's pocket with handwriting was really weird and cool, but at the same time, it was kind of confusing since it was suddenly mentioned in the book. However, it as the whole mystery was revealed throughout the book like how the acorn came about and why was it there. Everything was just so awesome!

The characters are really interesting, especially the siblings - Ben and Hazel, and also the horned boy. He is just a mystery to everyone and I was just so intrigued by his every move. I wanted to know what he was thinking, and why did he even do what he did sometimes. Also, Jack was just so cool but his character can be really depressing sometimes as he talked about himself and his family, which was kind of sad yet at the same time, it made me understand him more and allowed me to reach out to him even more.

What I disliked about this book:
The pace in this book was kind of slow. Not like there was nothing interesting, but the way the book was written, it wasn't meant to be a fast paced book. There was just so many details inside the book where you have to really read the sentence word by word in order not to skip out any crucial information of the mystery. It wasn't bad, but it just made me lose all my motivation as I progressed through the book. Which was kind of a disappointment...

Also, this book was just REALLY confusing sometimes. Like I will be reading about 10 pages but I will have totally no idea what just happened. It's not like I'm not paying attention to the book, but sometimes this just happen while I'm reading the book, and I will have to re-read parts of the book again before I finally grasp what it was trying to say. Which is annoying after awhile.

Overall:
I enjoyed this book but not that much that I will give it a 5 star rating since the book was really kind of slow and hard to get into at first. However, I would still recommend it if you are up for a cool and interesting plot, with amazing characters. The revelation of the mystery and the acorn was really worth it when you finally managed to finish reading the book.

If you guys like Fantasy, Romance, faeries, LGBT, adventure, then this book will definitely suit your taste! Definitely pick it up, the ending will be worth it.

Next I will be moving on to a small part of a spoiler review on my thoughts of the book. Only read on if you have finished reading the book so as not to get spoiled!

[SPOILER ALERT] 
[SPOILER ALERT]
Get off this paragraph if you don't want to be spoiled
(keep scrolling till you see the next sentence that has red!)
So for the part that I really enjoyed and has been on my mind ever since I put down this book was the ending. I was so overwhelmed by the ending, especially when Severin confessed his love for Ben, it was just so beautiful! The way he linked his confession back to the part where they had their first conversion in Ben's room, it was just played out so beautifully, showing how he actually remembered the words that Ben has ever mentioned. 

Can we also talk about how the mystery was revealed, it just left me speechless, I didn't expect that at all! Especially the part where it explains how the acorn came about, and the pact she made with the faerie was just so unexpected. However, it's like her effort were all meaningless when Ben destroyed his hand and was dropped out from school, it made her promise with the faerie all go to drain. And when it revealed that the acorn was written by her own night self was just so shocking! I didn't expect it to be her own self to have written that.

Also the epilogue was just priceless. I was so amazed at the ending of the epilogue, it just blew me away. I did not see that coming, and it was a really interesting way of writing an epilogue. The way Holly Black talked about what happened to the characters without even saying their name was just so cool! She just used description to describe the characters and what they are doing is just so mindblowing. It made me smiled at the last paragraph because it was a really interesting way of writing an epilogue, something that I have never really seen in most of the young adult books which was super awesome!
End of spoiler section!

All right, so with this, I will end the post here. I hope you guys will be interested in the book after you read my review, and be sure to pick it up if you are intrigued by my thoughts on the book and the synopsis written! Until the next post is up, happy reading! =)

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