Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews
Genres: YA, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual autistic MC, disabled dyslexic queer love interest, M/M
PoV: Third-person, present-tense
ISBN: 1250376289
Goodreads
CG Drews, acclaimed author of Don't Let the Forest In, returns with another deeply unsettling and yet hauntingly beautiful tale of murder and botanical body horror, perfect for fans of Andrew Joseph White and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Evander has lived like a ghost in the forgotten corners of the Hazelthorn estate ever since he was taken in by his reclusive billionaire guardian, Byron Lennox-Hall, when he was a child. For his safety, Evander has been given three ironclad rules to follow:
He can never leave the estate. He can never go into the gardens. And most importantly, he can never again be left alone with Byron's charming, underachieving grandson, Laurie.
That last rule has been in place ever since Laurie tried to kill Evander seven years ago, and yet somehow Evander is still obsessed with him.
When Byron suddenly dies, Evander inherits Hazelthorn’s immense gothic mansion and acres of sprawling grounds, along with the entirety of the Lennox-Hall family's vast wealth. But Evander's sure his guardian was murdered, and Laurie may be the only one who can help him find the killer before they come for Evander next.
Perhaps even more concerning is how the overgrown garden is refusing to stay behind its walls, slipping its vines and spores deeper into the house with each passing day. As the family’s dark secrets unravel alongside the growing horror of their terribly alive, bloodthirsty garden, Evander needs to find out what he’s really inheriting before the garden demands to be fed once more.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Highlights
~feral god x devoted worshipper ship dynamic
~this one BITES
~the garden is coming
~don’t trust the rubies
~if you want a monster i’ll give you a monster
Some books should be classed as Class A narcotics, and Hazelthorn is one of them.
(This is a compliment.)
I adored Don’t Let the Forest In, Drews’ gorgeous horror debut, but Hazelthorn is the one that, when I finished it, left me lying on my bed staring at the ceiling, muttering oh my gods, oh my GODS to myself over and over.
(This is also a compliment.)
For so many reasons, it shouldn’t have worked for me! I am not very interested in all things Gothic, and Hazelthorn has Gothic in its bones: set in an enormous, decaying manor surrounded by an impenetrable garden of poisonous plants; featuring a sickly protagonist who has never left the estate; with a cast made up of an elegantly vicious family hiding very dark secrets indeed. I have a lot of trouble reading stories where minors are abused by their guardians, and that is very much the case here; worse, when the book opens Evander does not recognise what’s being done to him as abuse, and Drews captures that headspace so well that it was very painful for me to read.
(This, too, is a compliment: it takes a great writer to a) write this kind of thing accurately and powerfully, and b) make me want to keep reading anyway!)
And so I did actually stall with this book for a bit; I read about a quarter of it, then set it down. It was Too Much for me!
…But I couldn’t stay away, and friends, when I did pick Hazelthorn up again, I devoured the other three quarters of the book in one sitting.
Evander’s heartbeat is a catastrophe against his ribs,
The protagonist of Don’t Let the Forest In looked fragile on the outside but had a beautiful monstrousness under his skin. Evander of Hazelthorn is wholly feral, and it is glorious. He’s also very, very clearly autistic, and I have to admit that I love how, for once, nobody made a clear distinction between whether his ferality (yes spellchecker it is a word) comes from his undiagnosed autism, his traumatising and abusive upbringing, or a secret third thing. I think the decision to not make it clear was very deliberate, because – Evander’s guardians treat him as a monster, in a way many neurodivergent people are going to be familiar with. And the deeper we get into Hazelthorn, the more we have to wonder if they might be right, actually – not to treat him the way they do, but they might be right that he’s a monster. And I think Drews’ point with this is twofold: one, it doesn’t matter whether he is or not, you still shouldn’t treat anyone like this, thanks!
But the second point is far more interesting to me. Because the other side of this coin seems to be: fuck it, you want a monster? I’ll give you a monster.
He has been locked in a room for seven years.
He has been starved for this.
Even more than Don’t Let the Forest In, Hazelthorn is a book I wish I’d had as a teenager. So many autistic readers are going to feel incredibly seen by this story. In some ways it is immensely cathartic, decadently indulgent in its – ‘revenge fantasy’ is not quite the right term, but something like that. Even as it is unquestionably horror, there is such a rush to reading about an autistic protagonist who gets to be – well, monstrous. When you’re autistic, you get so used to feeling like a monster, being told you are one, treated like you are one. Which makes it so validating to be inside Evander’s mind, to see and feel the awfulness and frustration of being treated that way set down on a page in black and white – and to get to read his growth into real monstrousness. It’s got to be one of my favourite character arcs in a long time, watching with my heart in my throat as Evander gradually learns to trust himself, to shed all the bs that’s been forced on him, to embrace who and what he is.
Can a revenge fantasy be against the whole world?
Think only of this: putting the whole world in his mouth and cracking open its bones with his teeth.
For me, Hazelthorn is a fiercely validating story, pure wish-fulfilment for everyone who, sick and tired of being Othered, finally screams I didn’t want to be like you anyway! Evander gets to be a monster without ever being dehumanised (by the narrative), and that is so joyful, it’s delicious, it is such a rush to read. As is that he is so completely embraced and adored by the other monster/s of the book, a twist that left me reeling but also ecstatic.
The other person who adores Evander is Laurie, which I do not feel is a spoiler because come on. And I could probably go for hours talking about how much I love Laurie and why (THERE ARE SO MANY REASONS) but in the context of ‘this is an autistic wish-fulfilment fantasy’, Laurie is especially important because of how he contrasts the rest of his family, and what that contrast means. The Lennox-Halls are, to be blunt, fucking evil – ‘eat the rich’ doesn’t even BEGIN to cover it – and the only one among them who is a decent person, Laurie, is the one who loves and accepts Evander completely. His love makes it clear that Evander is not unloveable, that there is nothing actually wrong with being autistic (or feral). The only people we see despising Evander for what he is…are the rest of the Lennox-Halls, none of whom I would spit on were they on fire. Every reader is going to understand perfectly that what the Lennox-Halls espouse is the exact opposite of what is true, so if they think Evander is Wrong?
Then he must be perfectly right.
He is a thing unlocked, unfettered, and he can feel his tattered moth wings tearing free of their pins and leaving only the imprint of himself behind.
The romance is my favourite kind of romance: vicious and hungry and all-encompassing, worshipful on one side and ferally devoted on the other. Laurie’s sharp edges are a thin, brittle shell around a depthless yearning to pray to Evander like a god, and for Evander Laurie is the only real thing in a world of lies, waking him up, sparking him to life through all the drugs and gas-lighting. It’s a delicious, swoonworthy dynamic and Drews writes it so well; we saw it in Don’t Let the Forest In, but here the dial is turned up to 11, because Evander has none of the social training Andrew had to hold him back. The emotions are absolutely searing, and I couldn’t get enough of them.
Words don’t make sense in the space between them, when Laurie’s heat is a molten promise against Evander’s bones. They are wrong like this–they should be flint against sharpened teeth if they touch. But instead, Laurie curves himself like a supplicant who would hollow out his own body if only it could be used to fit a lovely god inside.
I mean seriously, who needs sex scenes when we have THIS instead?!
He is wrecked with this terrible, gnawing need to splay Laurie on the floorboards like a butterfly with broken wings and put pins through him to make him stay still as he takes him apart. Carefully, reverently.
Scuse me, I’ll be right back, just gotta hop in an ice-cold shower for a sec.
Ahem.
As I hope the quotes here have amply demonstrated, Drews’ prose remains vivid and breathtaking, constantly finding ways to perfectly express things you never thought could be captured in words. The horror is truly horrifying, absolutely brutal – we’re talking long-term abuse and gas-lighting, non-consensual surgery and drugging, imprisonment, murder, and that’s before getting anywhere NEAR the wonderful supernatural stuff (the real horror is all from the humans, which is my favourite flavour of horror). The story is blood and jewels and impossible plants, so freaking clever in so many ways that I can’t talk about without spoilers – the kind of clever someone should do a thesis on, all layered genius. And when we finally learn what’s going on, when the pieces all snap into place? I SHRIEKED OUT LOUD at the reveal, it is the coolest twist-thing and I saw none of it coming and I love love LOVED it! I defy anyone else not to!
He is a wild thing, a ravenous thing, an untamed thing, and there is no one to tell him to be quiet.
Hazelwood is for every autist who doesn’t WANT to be fucking human, who’s heard ‘you are Wrong’ so many times they decided to Go Wrong. It’s for everyone who’s ever been a child at the mercy of terrible adults. It’s for the plant-horror fans and every reader who ever wished the creepy Gothic garden would come to life. It’s for those of us who side with the monsters, those of us who love them, those of us who’d really like to be them.
There’s nothing at all I want to critique about this book. Nothing that struck me as a flaw, nothing I thought could have been done better, nothing that could have made this story any better because it could not BE better. It is perfection. I love it. I want to reread it again and again and I’m sure that I will.
Magnificent. 500 stars. Instant forever-fave. Flawless.
Trigger warnings: View Spoiler »
Oh gosh, I wish I wasn’t such a visceral wimp about horror and particularly body-horror, because you make this book sound amazing! I can’t look too closely at the cover or I’m going to start feeling the echoes, but for people who are horror-equipped this sounds like wish fulfillment…
I want to tell you that the body-horror is fairly tame (I very much consider myself a horror wimp too!) but I’m not convinced my standards are calibrated correctly so maybe take that with a pinch of salt XD Thank you though, I worked hard to hype this one!
Fantastic review, and the bits you quoted are truly marvelous!!
Ahhh, thank you so much! I worked so hard on this one, it really deserved the effort ^^
I picked up this book after your entry and it is weirdly addictive. I don’t think the body horror is as bad as it could have been; I feel like Drews’s sort of poetic writing shields the reader (mercifully) from how visceral it could be. If some of the stuff was just bluntly stated it might come off as too much. What I will say is I didn’t expect how much this book would remind me of being 17 (not a great year for me, or probably for anyone really) and how surprisingly rough that aspect would be. I had to take a break about halfway through where I put it aside and deliberately thought about nice things until I felt like adult again, which is definitely not standard practice for me and I read a fair amount of horror. Kind of a high impact book, if you grew up with a learning disability and adults who only knew how to punish kids to get the behavior they wanted, this one is gonna be difficult. I loved the characters too much to just leave them trapped partway through though.