Ampersand Book Club discussion

Here's our March book!

The Darkest Part of the Forest is competently written, and I loved how Holly Black's contemporary rendition of a fairy tale featured a girl knight. That touch of magical realism where there's a town whose residents live alongside the fae but know they are safe (unlike the tourists) as long as they follow the rules.

But the story was also frustrating. I think the best characters are those who are flawed but with whom a reader can still empathize. In the case of this book, all the characters were flawed, and they consistently drove me crazy. I kept thinking if they'd only been more honest with each other, they could have avoided all these misunderstandings. Instead they spend the entire book acting tormented and doing reckless things.

Maybe I'd have been more favorably inclined towards this book if it didn't have so many of the tropes I've encountered in YA urban fantasy. There were some twists I didn't see coming, but the characters' bouts of self-pity, their I'm-too-damaged-to-be-with-you attitude, had me rolling my eyes. I read about halfway through but skimmed the last half.

I agree with pretty much all of what M said already. For a book that promised to break away from so many fairy tale tropes (view spoiler)[ what with the female knight and the prince falling for her brother (hide spoiler)], it felt so, just... standard, I guess? I feel like the story had a lot more potential and just kind of stuck to familiar paths instead of branching out and being more interesting. The main issue really did seem to be with the characters and their development. I would have been less critical of their flaws if they had been explored more. (view spoiler)[Like the whole thing with their parents being incompetent. That kept getting kind of dropped from the plot entirely and then brought up randomly, when it could have been integrated into the story as a whole much more cohesively. And the main characters hardly seemed affected by it anyway. That seemed strange. (hide spoiler)] I'm also not at all a fan of "love at first sight," so the whole romance with the prince was super disappointing. Why did that get so little attention?

On the positive side, I do continue to be a fan of how Black ties together the "real" worth with Celtic fairy tale themes and creatures. I really love the idea of a town that has grown up around coexisting with the weird beings in the nearby forest, even though it's not an original concept. This book was very similar in that respect to her Tithe series, which I am pretty sure takes place in the same universe based on some of the things the fairy characters mentioned.

I'd say this is a decent YA fantasy, but I was left feeling unsatisfied at the end. That probably has a lot to do with the really high expectations I went in with after reading her Curse Workers series and the Coldest Girl in Coldtown.

I thought it was a good, quick read, but maybe too quick. I did like the twist of a girl knight, but I felt like the story felt a bit flat. I kept waiting for something dramatic to happen