Don't Let the Forest In
CG Drews
Don’t Let the Forest In
CG Drews
Deliciously dark and dangerously addictive, Wilder Girls meets A Deadly Education in this queer dark academia YA thriller from the author of the sensational The Boy Who Steals Houses, filled with twisted fairy tales and monsters that will keep you up at night.
'No one would want a heart like his. But he'd still cut it out and given it away.'
On the first day back at boarding school, Andrew can't wait to find refuge in the twisted fairy tales that he writes for Thomas - the boy with hair like autumn leaves.
But Thomas' parents have vanished, and he has blood on his sleeve. Stranger still, Thomas won't talk to Andrew, even though he's always loved sketching the monstrous creatures from Andrew's stories.
Desperate to discover the truth, Andrew follows Thomas into the forest and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster - his drawings have come to life.
To ensure no one else dies, the boys must battle the creatures every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew fears the only way to stop them might be to destroy their creator.
Review
Bella Mackey
C.G. Drews’ return to young adult fiction is a gloriously gothic exploration of fairytales, isolation and obsessive friendship, set in an elite boarding school and a dark, untouched forest.
Andrew feels too fragile to exist properly in the world, thanks to the intense anxiety that either paralyses him or sends him spiralling. But between his polished and high‑achieving twin sister Dove, and his bold and fearless best friend Thomas, he’s able to keep himself mostly together.
But now, after a long summer apart, something is different. The close trio of friends is fractured but Andrew can’t work out why. And there’s something lurking in the dense forest that surrounds their secluded boarding school – something that’s following Andrew. Is it related to the bloody disappearance of Thomas’s parents? Or the twisted, macabre fairytale monsters that Andrew and Thomas have concocted together? And what price will they have to pay to keep the forest at bay?
This is a dark and emotional fantasy thriller, and a must-read for fans of dark-academia books like Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House or M.L. Rio’s If We Were Villains. It’s spooky and evocative, and C.G. Drews perfectly balances the style with richly nuanced characters that provide plenty of substance. It’s also full of heart-rending pining, so I heartily recommend it for fans of romance – especially any readers who are keen to see romance for an asexual character. For readers 14+.
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