The Waking Forest

Starred review from March 1, 2019

Gr 8 Up-A stunning, spooky, and lyrical debut. There is a witch in the woods, who grants dreaming children their wishes by giving them a rose petal to eat, plucked from her own heart. In return, they must give something of themselves, small hurts they will not miss. The Witch of Wishes is happy to take their pain so that someday it may surpass hers. Rhea is a teen long-plagued by disturbing dreams, who is now seeing things, a dark forest behind the house, a boy cloaked in darkness. Then her family members begin to disappear one by one. Rhea realizes she must take things into her own hands, as her world and that of the witch forcibly collide, changing her life forever. Elements of horror are subtly woven into this exquisitely written mash-up of a modern coming-of-age story and fairy tale. The pacing is taut as the tension steadily ramps up, creating an atmospheric read that is impossible to put down. VERDICT A sure hit for readers of edgy fantasy and fans of Stephanie Garber's Caraval or Heidi Heilig's The Girl from Everywhere.-Gretchen Crowley, formerly at Alexandria City Public Libraries, VA

Copyright 2019 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2019
Grades 7-10 Rhea has had lifelike dreams and visions since she was a child. Her parents say that she's sleepwalking, that she has anxiety, that it's not real?but it feels real. Seeing her own dead body in a nightmare feels palpably terrifying. Her three sisters, Rose, Renata, and Raisa, are similarly odd, or possibly cursed, belonging to dream worlds of their own, or ruminating on the cruelty of beauty and the ugliness of darkness at the breakfast table. For Rhea, the Darkness is a real person: her real world and the dreaming world are crossing over and mixing together, and in the Witch's dark dreamland, she could be a hero or a prisoner. How she chooses to use her magic against the Witch remains to be seen. This first novel is a twisting mix of modern story and fantasy tale. It has plenty of promise, but the ornate prose ( The Witch's heart bloomed an amaranthine rose with petals of velvety blood ) may turn off the casual reader. Best for larger collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2019
An older teen's uncanny dreams spill into reality--or perhaps it's the other way around.Rhea Ravenna, eldest of four white sisters, has been having visions and the same dream full of winding stairs and forbidden doors since she was young. Now 18 and with a decade of therapy for anxiety under her belt, she finally opens the door in her dream to find a dark presence behind it--and he is still there when she wakes up. Elsewhere in a vast woods--the same woods that Rhea sees in waking visions--a witch contentedly grants wishes to dreaming children, until a young man disguised as a black fox enters her realm and begins to tell her an enigmatic story of magic and rebellion and torn-out hearts. As Rhea's home begins to unravel and her family to disappear, her world and the witch's realm violently collide, and neither can hold back their screams. Dreams and stories--their power to escape reality and to restore it--are in the bones of this masterfully woven fantasy debut. And at its heart? The power of revolution in the face of coldly violent injustice. Wees has borrowed everything and nothing at all from fairy tales, stitching the most timeless and archetypal elements of dream, darkness, the forest, corruption, and imperfect valor into an intricate pattern crafted to twist, invert, and fall apart with exquisite precision.Into the woods like never before. (Fantasy. 14-17)

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