Willa of Dark Hollow by Robert Beatty || Dark MG With Love, Loss, and Family Bonds

Willa of Dark Hollow

The Great Smoky Mountains. 1901. Willa and her clan are the last of the Faeran, an ancient race of forest people who have lived in the mountains for as long as the trees have grown there. But as crews of newly arrived humans start cutting down great swaths of the forest she loves, Willa is helpless to stop them. How can she fight the destroyers of the forest and their powerful machines? When Willa discovers a mysterious dark hollow filled with strange and beautiful creatures, she comes to realize that it contains a terrifying force. Is unleashing these dangerous spirits the key to stopping the loggers? Willa must find a way to save the people and animals she loves and take a stand against an all-consuming darkness that threatens to destroy her world.For readers from 8 to 108.

Content Tags:

Perfect for readers who want:

• Gorgeous, evocative writing.
• Books with strong family vibes.
• Themes about conservation, family, and sacrifice.
• An interesting look at how the world is interconnected.
• Historical fiction blended with fantasy.

Many thanks to Disney-Hyperion and Rockstar Book Tours for copies in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

I’m going to admit that I didn’t love Willa of the Wood, even though it seems like everyone else did. Beatty has a fantastic writing style, though, so despite that, I definitely wanted to check out the next book in the series. Willa of Dark Hollow felt stronger than the first book to me, and I enjoyed it a lot more.

Willa of Dark Hollow is a love letter to conservationism and a thoughtful look at how interconnected the world is, touching on big themes like family, impact, and self-sacrifice.

Even though it’s touted as a standalone, I wouldn’t recommend reading it as such. I feel like it would lose a lot of impact having not read Willa of the Wood first, and readers are likely to be somewhat confused jumping into this book without previous knowledge of the series. This book is also dark, surprisingly so. I’d recommend it only for upper middle grade readers who are more mature and can handle death and violence.

Willa of Dark Hollow puts the dark in dark fantasy … which makes sense, because it’s even in the title!

I normally like dark fantasy, but I’m not used to it in middle grade, so it caught me by surprise! Make no mistake that this book is dark. If you enjoy books that will raise goosebumps along your arms, you will love this one. Beatty does the creepy factor so well that it made me shudder a little at times, which was fabulous! Of course, given that, this book likely isn’t for less mature middle grade readers who may not be ready for the violence and death.

The book isn’t needlessly dark, necessarily, though. It’s historical, so it’s set in a tumultuous time in the Appalachian Mountains (the Great Smokey Mountains). There’s an interesting underlying narrative about killing needlessly. In a world where Willa can commune with and understand the trees and their souls, this extends to the trees, too, as settlers are moving in and cutting them down. There are some interesting scenes, too, about whether killing is the answer to stopping killing and where/how the cycle ends (or if it ends).

Beatty combines gorgeous writing with powerful, evocative themes that will leave readers with plenty to think about after they set the book down.

There’s no doubt that Beatty is a fantastic writer! I mean, look at this quotes. *points to quote boxes* They are fabulous. I was struck over and over again by the power of his writing, and I enjoyed reading some passages multiple times just to soak them up.

It isn’t just the gorgeous writing, though. Beatty tackles some really big themes. Conservation is obviously a big one. For Willa, who can hear the trees and feel their souls, cutting them down is nothing short of murder. She weeps for each individual tree, of course, but also the magic of the forest that dies with them. One really big theme is the idea of interconnectedness. If the trees die, the animals die, and a whole cycle of death occurs. Slowly, Willa realizes that humans are a part of the chain, too, whether she likes it or not. And the things they do today will decide what happens tomorrow. It’s such a wonderful message for young readers to grapple with!

And the sibling/family bonds! *chef’s kiss* Willa has been adopted into a human family, but she still sometimes questions her place in it. Being a sister is hard, and she doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with her human sister. However, they both share a deep love for their father, and at no point is Willa treated like she doesn’t belong. It’s so heartwarming and lovely to see her have a place in this family, and that even as she may question it (as adopted children often do), her family doesn’t.

The fantasy elements of this are woven wonderfully into the historical setting, creating a magical effect.

While magic played a role in the first book, I felt like this one delved into it more. The reader gets to see more of what Willa is capable of, as well as being more immersed in the magic of the forest, even as it’s dying. Willa’s magic is as wondrous as it is dangerous, and we get to see both sides of that in this book. There’s a strong sense of the magic is what she makes it, basically, and she has the ability to choose which direction to go.

There’s a really dark atmosphere in the book, but it’s offset by all these wonderous things, too. I thought the balance was struck nicely in this book. Yes, magic can do horrible things, but it can do amazing things. I enjoyed the dichotomy of it and the fact that Willa did get a choice in the matter. Like so many things, it’s more about how you wield it than the thing itself.

There were what felt like inconsistencies in the book, things I think middle grade readers will probably overlook but which jumped out at me.

I noticed this a lot about the first book, and while I thought it was handled better in this book, it was still there. I’ll list a few examples which I don’t think will spoil anything:

• Willa repeatedly decries how she helps people/animals and doesn’t hurt them … except she’s done just that. Repeatedly. Of course, one could definitely make the argument that she wasn’t necessarily in the wrong at the time. However, it seems quite disingenuous to constantly push the fact that she’s good and innocent and pacifist when she hasn’t really been. This really made me like her less because it felt like she was constantly lying to the reader, rather than simply admitting that she’d done things she hadn’t wanted to but was trying to do better or something to that effect.
  
• At one point, Willa says she forgives wolves for killing animals to eat because that’s in their nature, and she extends that idea to her father … but not to all humans? She keeps bringing up the fact that humans are monsters because, in the very first pages of the book, they kill a bear. Even though right before killing the bear, they mention it would feed the entire village and they needed the food. The book doubles down on this later and shows just how horrible these people are in reality, but Willa couldn’t possibly have known that at the time. As far as she knew, they were killing for food and that’s it. The fact that she keeps coming back to this weird double standard kind of just gave me whiplash.
  
• Characters in this are either good or bad … that’s it. There’s no nuance. I think this is what leads to the majority of the inconsistency about the characters. Willa has to be good, of course, so she can’t admit that she’s done bad things. The bad people also have to be bad, so of course they can’t be shown doing good things. That would mess up the entire narrative! Since this book revolves around a lot of sensitive topics (like deforestation, revenge, injustice, etc.), I was a little disappointed that it took such a heavy-handed, black-and-white approach rather than adding some nuance.
  
• Faeran children are born as twins, and their names are palindromes, which is cute, buuuuut … there’s an emphasis on the fact that Faeran don’t speak English. They have their own language, so it makes no sense at all that their names would be palindromes in English, which apparently has very different sounds. And their language doesn’t have a written component. I highly doubt middle grade readers will notice or care about this, but darn it, as someone who loves languages, this bothered me!

About Robert Beatty

Robert Beatty is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Serafina series and the Willa of the Wood series published by Disney Hyperion. Loved by young readers and adults alike, the Serafina and Willa books are being taught in over a thousand classrooms nationwide and have been translated into over 22 languages. Robert lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and three daughters. He writes full-time now, but in his past lives, Robert was one of the early pioneers of cloud computing, the founder/CEO of Plex Systems, the co-founder of Beatty Robotics, and the chairman/CTO of Narrative magazine. In 2007, he was named an Entrepreneur of the Year. When asked about the inspiration for his books, Robert said, “The Serafina and Willa books grew out of my desire to write stories about unusual and heroic young girls for my three daughters."

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