“Come now, my child, if we were planning to harm you, do you think we’d be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest?”
These ominous lines by poet Kenneth Patchen serve as an epigraph to my new favorite faerie-based urban fantasy, by an old favorite author—Holly Black. You may remember my recent review of Holly Black’s morbid middle grade ghost story, Doll Bones. Well, Black has come back into the wonderful world of YA with one of her newest novels, released last year, The Darkest Part of the Forest. While nothing will ever replace vampires for me in the paranormal romance department (sorry, werewolves and zombies), faeries tend to come in second among my favorite supernatural creatures. Like vampires, they force you to confront the paradox of beautiful monsters. How can something so alluring be bad? And how can something so dangerous be beautiful? While confronting these paradoxes outwardly, the characters of The Darkest Part of the Forest also have to come to terms with the beauty and the monsters inside themselves. Continue reading The Darkest Part of the Forest Review