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adrienner's review
3.0
I worked on this book over the past week and a half. It is a fairly short, easy read, as by the description, geared towards teens. I will say I did not necessarily feel like I was reading a book geared towards teens. Sometimes a books is very obviously geared towards an audience that the reader is not a part of, and I did not feel like that at all with this novel.
This is a fun read, albeit a bit predictable. The writing was superb, and I think a little more elegant than most teen novels have. I highly recommend this book to teenage and adult readers.
This is a fun read, albeit a bit predictable. The writing was superb, and I think a little more elegant than most teen novels have. I highly recommend this book to teenage and adult readers.
coffeeandink's review
3.0
Gorgeous original fairy tale loosed based on Demeter and Persephone. I wish Hannah were not quite so dumb.
stargirlcaraway's review
4.0
That was pretty lovely. I've owned this book since I took it from my 7th grade classroom's bookcase 6 or 7 years ago, but I've never read it before now. Lately I've been really appreciating fantasy stories like this that are a little less known but are still really good.
This story was about a girl named Hannah who lives at the edge of the Tanglewood with some animals and none of them have any memory of how they got to the wood, but they've been there for a loooooong time. Like, centuries. Hannah grows plants in her hair and once every month she takes a wizard in the wood tea made from those plants, until she decides to stop when she realizes that taking the plants out of her head weakens her horribly. Pretty often she and the nearby villagers see knights riding off into the wood to find the treasure at its heart, but they never come out.
So Hannah meets one of these knights and something happens where she needs to find the sorcerer queen who sends the knights to the wood to help him, so she goes off on a quest to find this queen. Of course during this time she actually finds out from where she (and her animal friends) came and who the wizard guy is.
It was a pretty magical story. It completely took me out of reality and into the world it's set in, which I always want from books.
What I liked:
The simplicity, the writing, how Hannah changed with the seasons, the fact that the god in the story is a woman, the little sprinkle of romance (which was incredibly underdeveloped, but fit the fairytale feel)
What I didn't like:
Hannah total lack of personality, the fact that she COULD NOT put the pieces of the puzzle together. Even at the very end of the story she was like "?????" and the goddess lady was like "Hannah you dummy, you STILL don't understand what this all means?"
Otherwise I really enjoyed it. It's a quaint little fairytale-esque story and I'm glad I read it.
This story was about a girl named Hannah who lives at the edge of the Tanglewood with some animals and none of them have any memory of how they got to the wood, but they've been there for a loooooong time. Like, centuries. Hannah grows plants in her hair and once every month she takes a wizard in the wood tea made from those plants, until she decides to stop when she realizes that taking the plants out of her head weakens her horribly. Pretty often she and the nearby villagers see knights riding off into the wood to find the treasure at its heart, but they never come out.
So Hannah meets one of these knights and something happens where she needs to find the sorcerer queen who sends the knights to the wood to help him, so she goes off on a quest to find this queen. Of course during this time she actually finds out from where she (and her animal friends) came and who the wizard guy is.
It was a pretty magical story. It completely took me out of reality and into the world it's set in, which I always want from books.
What I liked:
The simplicity, the writing, how Hannah changed with the seasons, the fact that the god in the story is a woman, the little sprinkle of romance (which was incredibly underdeveloped, but fit the fairytale feel)
What I didn't like:
Hannah total lack of personality, the fact that she COULD NOT put the pieces of the puzzle together. Even at the very end of the story she was like "?????" and the goddess lady was like "Hannah you dummy, you STILL don't understand what this all means?"
Otherwise I really enjoyed it. It's a quaint little fairytale-esque story and I'm glad I read it.
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