“If you cut open my chest you’ll find a garden of rot where my heart should be.”

Don’t Let the Forest In, C.G. Drews 

After the disaster that was Onyx Storm, I needed something beautifully written and fundamentally sound. Cue Don’t Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews. This young adult thriller was just that: thrilling. But it also had gorgeous prose. It was a haunting and horrifically atmospheric narrative that made me not want to put it down. I finished it in a few days, which I simply don’t do anymore.

Andrew Perrault arrives to Wickwood Academy for his senior year with a notebook full of twisted fairytales, a distant twin and a promise to stay out of the forest. Thomas Rye arrives with a blood stained cuff and a secret — the monsters in his art are coming to life. Don’t Let the Forest In rips readers apart and plants seeds of obsession, grief and lost identity as Thomas and Andrew fight the monsters lurking in the forest. 

*I have no control, so SPOILERS AHEAD*

I don’t think I will ever get over the prose of this book. It’s so evocative and immersive. It puts you right in Andrew’s tangled web of a head.  It’s grotesque and gory in the most beautiful and uncomfortable ways. It flows like a fairytale; like a Brother’s Grimm story brought to this century. 

It was perfect for evoking the grief and obsession of Andrew’s distortion of reality. It’s haunting.

Like this quote:

“He needed Thomas, needed their lungs sewn inside each other so he could remember how to breathe. He needed to take words from Thomas’s mouth and put them in his own so he had something to say.”

Or this one:

“This is how they were, bones broken and mended crookedly, each intertwined with the other. He thought maybe you could love someone so much you ruined them, and then ruined yourself.”

It was genuinely mesmerizing. The writing along with the relationship between Thomas and Andrew almost reminded me of If We Were Villains. Man, I need to reread that book.

Anywho. … I also enjoyed the way Drews played with grammar rules throughout to evoke emotion through stylization. By bumping words up and down to create this disconnect in a sentence and not capitalizing words to make it feel more urgent, Drews plays with writing in a way I rarely see in published works. It was so fun to see someone take the risk of “breaking” the rules of writing.

If you know me, you know I’m a sucker for symbolism; and DLTFI is riddled with it. The theme of repressed grief spread throughout the novel manifesting with the monsters in the forest is genius. 

Both Thomas and Andrew are bogged down by grief and denial from what happened to Dove and show that through their art. They won’t talk about what happened, so they draw/write it. It reflects their internal struggles in a way they can’t communicate through spoken words. That art then becomes the monsters in the forest, a place that used to be a safe haven for the trio that’s now a physical outlet for the darkness they harbor. The monsters force Andrew and Thomas to face their inner monsters. 

It’s such a heartbreaking message wrapped up in the horror that grief often makes of your life, and Drews shows that in how Thomas and Andrew deal with Dove’s death — not sleeping, not eating, disassociating, denial. Drews brings grief to life in every horrific way it ravages us all eventually.

Overall, this is such a phenomenal young adult book. I actually want to read more from this author, so BRB … doing some research.

NEXT UP: Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

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