The Darkest Part of the Forest
by Holly Black
High School   Little, Brown   323 pp.
1/15   978-0-316-21307-3   $18.00 g
e-book ed. 978-0-316-21305-9   $9.99

The people of Fairfold live beside the fairy folk with scant worry and not a little smugness. After all, only foolish tourists, lured to town by legend and the beautiful horned prince in the unbreakable glass coffin, risk bringing harm to themselves by offending the fae. Hazel and Ben Evans, growing up in the woods and left to themselves through the benign neglect of their bohemian parents, know differently. As children they stumbled upon a corpse and afterwards began hunting the monsters of the forest, Ben stunning the creatures with his enchanting music and Hazel wielding the powerful sword she discovered. Five years later, wounded by heartache, sixteen-year-old Hazel barely recognizes her childhood self; now she kisses too many boys in an attempt to repress painful memories, while Ben kisses boys in a desperate search for requited love. When the glass coffin is discovered shattered and empty, Hazel’s memories start breaking open, too, as she confronts secrets kept, bargains made, and her feelings for Ben’s best friend, Jack, a changeling boy. Author Black blends magic with the ordinary world deftly and believably; intoxicated teens dance on the horned boy’s coffin in the woods as tinny music plays from their iPods. Her empathetic protagonists are familiar in their vulnerability but compelling in their bravery. Rich descriptions of beautiful but terrible creatures and the thorny briar circling a fairy mound draw readers in to the vividly conjured world. Like a true fairy tale, Black’s story weds blinding romance and dark terrors, but her worthy heroes are up to the challenge of both.

From the January/February 2015 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.