Review: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

My Rating:  ✯✯✯✯✩  

Genre: YA, Urban Fantasy, Fae / Faerie

Publication Date: January 13th, 2015

“Hazel, Hazel, blue of eye. Kissed the boys and made them cry.” 

Quick Synopsis 

Hazel and her family live in a town thats one of the few places where living with the reality of fairies is something ingrained in the culture of the place. In the way that a beachside surfer town would deal with the threat of sharks and drowning, the town of Fairfold coexists along side a community of fairies. From time to time a tourist or two will turn up dead buy some misfortune curtesy of the local Fair Folk. Towns people however have much more common sense when it comes to the Fae and rarely experience any related mishaps.
The towns biggest tourist attraction is a small glass coffin in the woods which has proven over generations to be both indestructible and unmovable. The coffin holds a devastatingly gorgeous and mysterious horned fairy boy in some sort of everlasting sleep. A sleep that Hazel has dreamed of waking him from, Sleeping Beauty style, for as long as she can remember. This dream is one also shared by her older brother.
When one day the town is turned upside down with the news that the glass coffin has finally been broken by unknown persons in the night and the boy is missing, Hazel and her brother decide if anyone can find him its going to be them.

My Review 

I just have to say right off that all I could think about when reading this book was Daniel Radcliffe in Horns.  The image was unshakable regardless of how not perfect and polished he is in comparison to the way the sleeping fairy is described.  This is the part where I out myself as a Dan Radcliffe fangirl. 

I say this about pretty much every Holly Black novel but its worth saying again: She writes beautifully complex female protagonists that are damaged and fragile but have an undeniable power and strength all at once. Her representations of sexuality are always much more inclusive than many other popular YA authors at the moment and she writes interpersonal relationships about family and friends with the kind of complicated perspective that is uncommon in YA. 

Not as much rawness and sass as her A Modern Faerie Tale trilogy but still a great read with some laugh out loud moments. 

This is a great stand alone that I would recommend for anyone who is into Urban Fantasy or modern Faerie stories. 

Pictures bellow courtesy Holly Black's Tumblr