The Forest Grimm

by Kathryn Purdie. Pub Date 9/19/23

4.5*s. Best enjoyed when you want a dark fantasy with a slightly flawed heroine and a very mysterious narrative.

Publisher’s Synopsis:

“”Tell me again, Grandmère, the story of how I die.”

The Midnight Forest. The Fanged Creature. Two fortune-telling cards that spell an untimely death for 17-year-old Clara. Despite the ever-present warning from her fortune-teller grandmother, Clara embarks on a dangerous journey into the deadly Forest Grimm to procure a magical book—Sortes Fortunae, the Book of Fortunes—with the power to reverse the curse on her village and save her mother.

Years ago, when the villagers whispered their deepest desires to the book, its pages revealed how to obtain them. All was well until someone used the book for an evil purpose—to kill another person. Afterward, the branches of the Forest Grimm snatched the book away, the well water in Grimm’s Hollow turned rancid, and the crops died from disease. The villagers tried to make amends with the forest, but every time someone crossed its border, they never returned.

Now, left with no alternative, Clara and her close friend, Axel—who is fated never to be with her—have set their minds to defying fate and daring to accomplish what no one else has been able to before. But the forest—alive with dark, deadly twists on some of our most well-known fairy tales—has a mind of its own.“

Review:

First of all, super excited that this will be a duology. The epilogue left me wanting more, and I’m glad that Purdie is planning to give that to us. 

I wouldn’t say that The Forest Grimm is necessarily a fairytale retelling, it’s more of a dark original version mash up. It has all of the same ingredients that a normal fairytale would have. It has magic, conflict, an evil force that is wreaking havoc, a rescue of sorts, and love (chivalric, familial, or romantic—this has all three). If mainstream fairytales were a birthday cake, this one is far more of a black forest. A deep decadent chocolate with tart bursts of cherry. If you find that mouth watering, sink your teeth into this one. 

Fate and magic are woven deeply into the village of Grimm’s Hallow, a cursed place that was once full of light and magic…until someone took advantage of that magic to kill. Now, the forest surrounding Grimm’s Hallow has pulled back the roots of its magic that once nourished it, sometimes stealing villagers in the night and killing or maiming those who try to enter it to find the Lost. Every few months, there is a lottery that determines the next person who may try to enter the forest to save the lost villagers and find the magic book that was once used as a weapon, and reverse the curse. 

Clara’s mother was the first to be Lost three years before. Her grandmother, a seer, has already foreseen Clara’s early death in her cards. She’s prepared to die if it means she can get into the forest and trade her life for her mother’s. When she tries to cheat at the next lottery and her friend, Axel, is chosen instead, Clara is determined to go with him into the forest. But the forest is forbidding and foreboding, and Clara only finds a way into it through happenstance. Axel and Clara steal into the forest to find both Clara’s mother and Axel’s Lost fiancée, Ella. When they are joined by Clara’s best friend and Ella’s sister, Henni, the three travel deeper into the vicious woods protected only thinly by a loophole in the forest’s magic in the shape of a red rampion flower. 

As they travel through, they find that the very forest moves in the night when they are asleep, and the Lost have become much more than just Lost—the magic has had a very profound affect over their bodies and minds, dangerous shadows of who they once were. They have been twisted into dark versions of the fairytales that we as the audience know well (Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, a bit of Little Red Riding Hood), becoming people and creatures that make you look sideways at some of the Disney movies or fairytale books we grew up with. 

What’s more, there are secrets amongst the group that will have a profound effect on the outcome of their journey. The heavy hint here is romance, but whether that romance will manifest or is doomed from the beginning is yet to seen—to you, because you haven’t read it. But also to me, because I can see this story completely changing with a second book on the way. 

Overall, I thought this book was a fantastic dark survival fantasy, which I’m all about. Have you even READ my reviews before? If not, hint: survival thrillers/fantasy are my jam. I can’t wait to see what Purdie has in store for us in the second book. I’ll need a special edition of this one on my shelf. 

Thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Kathryn Purdie for the advanced copy in exchange for this early and honest review.