Title: The Waking Forest
Author: Alyssa Wees
Publication Date: March 12, 2019
Publisher: Delacorte
Format: Library Hardcover
The waking forest has secrets. To Rhea, it appears like a mirage, dark and dense, at the very edge of her backyard. But when she reaches out to touch it, the forest vanishes. She’s desperate to know more—until she finds a peculiar boy who offers to reveal its secrets. If she plays a game.
To the Witch, the forest is her home, where she sits on her throne of carved bone, waiting for dreaming children to beg her to grant their wishes. One night, a mysterious visitor arrives and asks her what she wishes for, but the Witch sends him away. And then the uninvited guest returns.
The strangers are just the beginning. Something is stirring in the forest, and when Rhea’s and the Witch’s paths collide, a truth more treacherous and deadly than either could ever imagine surfaces. But how much are they willing to risk to survive?
The blurb had all the dark, creepy, fairy tale vibes, and I was all here for that.
The Waking Forest is a twisting tale of darkness, mystery, surrealism, and … foxes! And who the heck doesn’t love foxes?!
The plot is told in two storylines: Rhea, the girl who can see the world decaying and dying around her, and the Witch in the Woods, who grants wishes to children.
Each story had something to offer. Rhea was banter and mystery. The Witch in the Woods is dark and surreal. But both have foxes. And let’s be honest, that’s really the important part here, right?
❧ The writing was really beautiful in places and evocative and thought-provoking. There were so many sections that just gripped me and made me pause because of how much they rang true.
The prose itself was a bit of a double-edged sword for me (more on that in a minute). But sometimes, just sometimes, it was so dang accurate that it caught me off-guard and I really had to re-read it to absorb the whole thing. Sections were poignant and relatable and capture the essence of feelings so perfectly.
Disappearing forever should not just be the quick and quiet opening and closing of a door.
❧ The Waking Forest is a Sleeping Beauty retelling, and it does a fantastic job of capturing that fairy tale feel.
I will say that I thought this was lost in the last third or so of the book, but for the first two parts? Phew. It had all the creepy, sinister vibes of something about to happen, like the real fairy tales (not the Disney sort).
Wees masterfully blended whimsical fantasy and imagery with painful and emotional plots, marrying the two in what ended up being a delightfully surreal read.
I mean, fairy tales are messy. Or they used to be, anyway. Even Disney’s aren’t all rainbows and sunshine. This book gets back to the core of what I love so much about the old fairy tales: darkness.
❧ As a sister of sisters, my favorite thing about this story was easily the banter.
And banter they do. You know, as teen girls will. When the four R’s get together, what happens is glorious and snarky and delicious. Pretty much every time they’re all there.
There were plenty of instances in the book where I felt the dialogue was stunted or unnatural, but whenever the four R’s got together, it felt like their real personalities were shining through and they really came to life.
There were plenty of forgettable scenes including these girls, exemplified by the fact that I still can’t tell you the difference between Renata and Raisa. My bad. My favorite scenes, though, are when they’re all together just acting like, well, people. You know, as you do.
“Who said anything about summoning a demon?” I yell before Raisa can retort. “We’re perfectly capable of eating you ourselves.”
❧ This is a story within a story … within a story. It’s bookception. But in a cool way.
The two storylines, at first, seem like they have nothing in common, but bit by bit, they come together as the story unfolds.
Wees cleverly drops hints and clues that, if you pay attention, tie the two together, and I had inklings pretty early on of how they were connected.
Yet, I wasn’t disappointed when the two finally aligned, because I didn’t feel like I had guessed a plot twist. I felt, instead, like this was a journey I was on and it had reached its natural destination, that of course it would end here all along. Mostly because it wasn’t presented as a plot twist or a gotcha, and that felt nice.
Hands ready, little witch.
go, little girl, and take what belongs to you.
“I am not little,” I say to them.
To us, they say, you are.
But little things, they say, grow into big things.
And big things, they say, must not forget they were once little things too.
❧ Wees cleverly alludes to other fairy tales in the prose, and it’s kind of cool.
I mean, sometimes. This is another one of those double-edged swords. I actually can’t talk too much about this because of spoilers, but it’s always nice, in my opinion, when there’s a little nod to other source material. So there’s perhaps a metaphor slipped in comparing something to poisoned apples or things like that. In some aspects, it was rather neat.
But here’s the downfall for me: I expected them to have more importance or weight in the story, and they don’t. I mean, the allusions are pretty heavy-handed and in your face, so you really can’t miss them. So I expected, at first, that of course they would add up to something. Aside from a particular mirror being important … no. The others basically just show up as name drops and are gone, without any real bearing on the story.
❧ All the main characters’ names began with the letter R. I have a really tiny mammal brain, and it basically overheated trying to tell them all apart.
There’s the parents, Reece and Rafael Ravenna. Then, there’s the girls. Four of them. Rhea (aka Ree) is the protagonist, but then there’s also Rose, Raisa, and Renata (aka Ren). As the protagonist, Rhea was easy to remember, and Rose was easy enough, but for the life of me, I couldn’t keep Raisa and Renata straight. Then, you add on the fact that their last name is Ravenna, and it’s just too much for me. I love the letter R as much as the next person, but … we need to break up.
❧ While beautiful, the writing is a bit … purple. There’s so much figurative language clogging up the prose that I sometimes had difficulty figuring out what was happening, and they didn’t all make sense.
Now, if you’re a fan of purple prose … this is your book. This is your jam. You will for sure love this, because it is quite lovely. But for me personally, it was just too much. I’ll even give an example:
He obliges. But the silence seems to smirk. I can feel the bite of it, like steel teeth scything into the skin of my heart.
Starts off great. She’s talking to a shadow person, so the silence smirking? Golden description. Loving it. But then she feels the bite of … the smirk? Or the silence? Fine, I guess, even though it’s a weird change in tone from taunting to violent. But then … why steel teeth specifically? Because of the mention of a scythe, which is made of steel? But a scythe doesn’t have teeth. Nor does it bite. And teeth can’t scythe. Biting and scything are two different actions, so which is it? Also, there’s no skin on your heart. They’re two different organs. So I’m assuming it’s supposed to be skin as in the outer part of a fruit/veggie, which adds yet another confusing layer to the image and I’m honestly not sure what that adds to the sentence. So in the middle of a dialogue exchange, I’m suddenly stopping to try to parse through this one really dense sentence that I just don’t understand. And this happens pretty much every few sentences.
❧ Things are repeated. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. In triplicate, often.
I actually have no idea why this is? I guess three’s supposed to be a pretty lucky/magical number? Maybe it has some relation to fairy tales that I’m not aware of. But the prose was so repetitive in places, repeating things three times for seemingly no reason. Well, that’s not true. I imagine it was for dramatic effect. But it was done so often that it just ended up annoying me.
❧ The last third of the book changes in tone and ends up more of a protagonist goes on a quest to save the world type plot. Which was … weird?
Also, too easy. Saving the world is supposed to be hard, yo. The writing changed, and the story seemed to shed its fairy tale vibe to become more of a straight-forward quest story. The excessive descriptions were even toned down.
Unfortunately, the biggest thing I took away from the ending was that it was tooeasy.
Okay, sure, there were parts that were supposed to be difficult and read like they were difficult, but I wasn’t buying it. I never really got that sense of stakes, that fear like, “Oh, shoot, something’s about to happen. Can the hero pull through?!” Instead, I just had this sense of inevitability about how it would end, which really just undermined the climax, which felt so short and over in a bang (sort of literally).
I had a lot of problems with this one. The purple prose. The incessant repetition. The weird tonal shift in the last third. I ended up one-starring it. It was sad because I’d seen good reviews, but, nope. I’m amazed I made it through the whole book, the prose is so awful.
I liked some parts of the prose, but it was very definitely a bright shade of purple, and a lot of it didn’t make sense. It felt like words put together because they sounded nice, not because they actually painted a vivid picture. The last third was disappointing, I definitely agree. I loved the darkness and mystery and eeriness in the first two thirds, so once that was gone, there really wasn’t much left for me.
“A bright shade of purple!” I love it!
I think the last third should have been a sequel. The resolution came far too quickly with minimal effort on the part of the protagonists, making it seem like the stakes were never that high to begin with. A sequel would have given more time for an actual conflict.
You know, I hadn’t thought of that, but man, that would’ve been a really neat way, if it had ended with her waking and then the second book as a quest. That would’ve given her more time to actually flesh out the quests (and, you know, make them actually difficult and add stakes), and that would’ve been so much more thrilling. Well, now I’m sad that that wasn’t the case. xD
Great review! Some of the quotes you’ve shared do sound really beautiful (particularly the one about disappearing) but the R names would drive me mad! Knowing me, I’m going to want to check this out anyway, as I love retellings.
There were definitely some awesome quotes in it! If you enjoy that writing style, I highly recommend it! For me, I just overanalyze things and it makes my brain overheat, but I know people who just absolutely adore that style. 😀 I’d say go for it. It was an enjoyable read, and I thought the retelling aspect of it was really unique!
Beautiful review and I totally get what you are saying about the ending. The writing was stunning. I was confused by everyone’s name beginning with R – I hate when author’s do that, not going to lie. It takes me awhile to sort it out and just frustrates me at the beginning.
I wanted that little fox so badly – yes to all pet foxes for us!
I’ve realized that I’ve read so many books about foxes this year, and I kind of love it. Clearly, the universe is telling me I should own one.
I have really bad name retention to begin with, for some reason, and having them be too similar just makes it worse for me. I do definitely hope to read more from Ms. Wees, though! She’s obviously a talented writer.