Hazelthorn: Gorgeously gothic horror and queer dark romance from the NYT bestselling author of Don't Let the Forest In | 
pickI absolutely LOVED this book and devoured it in a day!!! This book ripped my heart out and taunted me with it before violently shoving it back in just to repeat the process. Am I happy with the ending? Absolutely!! It‘s it kinda vague? Yes. Yes it is, but I‘m clinging to the idea that Hazelthorn and Laurie get to be happy together for a long time. 💚💚💚
pickI just finished this. It was pretty good. I didn‘t enjoy it as much as don‘t let the forest in, but this was still a good time.
#12booksof2025
November saw me finish Hazelthorn and there‘s just something about botanical horror!
Love seeing CG Drews career really start to take off - I‘ve followed them on IG for such a long time (well before they started on the road to publication) that they feel like an old friend! Excited for their next release.
My first read of 2026
pickI was super pumped to get a (digital) ARC for this and then promptly fell down into the depths of the dreaded reading slump and barely read anything for a month. This book helped me claw my way out of it.
I adored this, I love how CG puts sentences together,
I love gothic, I love botanical horror, I love reading the same book as my friend and texting unhinged theories… all in all just a good time!
I needed the shelf trophy, obviously 🤣
bailedI could tell very early on the writing was simply not for me. It was so repetitive in telling about rot and decay to create a spooky atmosphere, but it was too much and just didn‘t work for me.
“Hazelthorn has barely dragged its decayed corpse into the 21st century…”
“Beyond it, the inky dark of the hallway stretches like a diseased throat…”
“The dark stares back, mouth wet.”🤔
“His stomach is full of curdled cream and rotted violet stems…”
pick'Hazelthorn' is a beautiful, sad, terrifying, and tender fever dream of a novel. There is body and botanical horror. However, the way it is written, it is beautiful at the same time. I found myself slowing my reading down just to savor the novel. If you love Gothic horror with a wonderful and sad love story, read 'Hazelthorn.' 5 stars.
@BookwormAHN #HauntedShelf #BlackCatCrew
pickThis is a fun creepy house YA Horror novel with lots of body horror (I‘ve never seen so many uses of the word “viscid”). It was a good palette cleanser for me between literary fiction reads. And the cover has some fun metallic elements.
I introduced an 🇺🇸 friend to NetGalley and she was approved for this book 5 months ago… *angry muttering about Australian book rights* to be fair, I had forgotten that I‘d requested this, mostly because I didn‘t think I was likely to get it.
