I'm torn on how to rate this one. It's very well-written: poetic, atmospheric, nuanced. But the story itself is not really one you can enjoy reading. It's too full of tragedy and heartbreak— the book equivalent of listening to a beautiful, sad song.

Dark and sinister, tales within a tale. Forlorn with infidelity and grief; a wonderful weaving of past pagan mythos, demonic fey, and a bloodline curse carried to present.

Unfortunately, the ending left me flat.

3.5 Unbearable loss and grief, a failing marriage, a literary obsession bring Erin and Charles to the dusty Manor that Erin inherited from her ancestor, Caedmon Hollow. A Victorian children's novel, the only work that Caedmon would leave before he committed suicide, stirs a fascination in Charles, one he hopes to turn into a worthy dissertation. There are, however, more things than can be rationally explained, in the woods behind the house.

Mixing folklore, an obscure novel, and a newly discovered cryptogram, this is an eerily creepy read. The pages are infused with a subtle dread, the slow buildup enhances this mood of darkness. What is real, what is not? Literary allusions in the crptogram and other places, Caedmon uses references from many famous authors, Shakespeare among them, added to the mystery of what exactly Caedmon was trying to say. There is much sadness here, much mystery, some gorgeous prose, and a fascinating look at the darkness within and without. The long tentacles of a history past but not forgotten.

"Maybe , Charles thought, maybe stories held a germ of truth. Maybe if there weren't really any happily ever after to our once upon a times, there could at least be a hard won accommodation to the vicious world, a compromise at tale's end with bitterness and suffering.
Maybe."

ARC from Netgalley.

Thank you to NetGalley and John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishing for the free eARC in exchange for an honest review!

"Once upon a time..." a man living near an enchanted wood starts having delusions and writes a book. Many years later, an English scholar bumps into that book and his fate appears to be linked to the Story from that point on. It is a Story (capital Story) within a story... Something I wish the author had pursued more!

The book is more about grief than folklore, but there is a healthy mix of both. Charles and Erin are still reeling from the death of their child and his infidelity. Their marriage is disintegrating and they move to Hollow House trying to start over. When the visions and nightmares and story parallels start...!

In the middle of the book the grief exposition got a bit repetative, but I had no urge to skim pages. Neither main character showed a tad of growth either - but can their relationship?

I enjoyed learning a lot of new words but some parts seemed unnecessarily complex. It fit with the atmosphere though!

Long story short: awesome story! Would recommend to anyone that likes a good fairy tale, atmospheric fiction, folk lore, or a good story in general!

The cute, awkward romance at the beginning wasn't what I was expecting and is not really right for our publication, but it seems nicely written. Thanks very much for letting me check it out.

This gripping novel, a mix of horror and fantasy, traces the slow disintegration of a marriage following a child's tragic death. It unfolds in a setting rich or even dense with fairy-tale tropes: an ancient family home surrounded by primeval forest in the English countryside. Exploring the same ground as novels like MYTHAGO WOOD and POSSESSION, as well as Lindsay Clarke's underappreciated THE CHYMICAL WEDDING, the novel builds a satisfying atmosphere of creeping, eerie dread, but the ending feels pat and unearned, as if the writer had wandered too far into the woods and could not find his way out again except by the most familiar of paths.

In the Night Wood has all the elements for a gripping dark fairy tale - a wonderfully descriptive creepy setting, a lost child, and subtle and not so subtle ties between current and past events. Unfortunately, I wasn't gripped, and other than a few sightings here and there, I found very little in the way of fantasy. In fact, I found most of the story to be rather depressing. The author gives us a premise that hints at something original in the genre, but instead falls back on too many references to classic literature. Granted, those references work well with the dark tone of the story, but I would've liked a little more originality. That aside, my real problem with this story lay in the characters. Flawed or unreliable characters in a tale like this can work well, but there has to be something redeemable there. I didn't find that with Charles. He's certainly flawed, but I didn't see a single thing to like about this man. He's made mistakes and even acknowledges them, but he doesn't learn from the experiences, nor does he attempt to change. Charles' wife, Erin, is little more than a caricature in the story. We know she's grieving and has turned to drugs and alcohol, and that pretty well sums it up. I can empathize with her loss, but with so little development, it felt more like reading about a stranger in the newspaper - we have the bare bones details but no depth. We learn more about Silva during the will Charles cheat or won't he period than we ever learn about Erin. She does eventually come out of her substance induced haze and take some action, but for me, it was just too little, too late. Which is also how I felt about the fantasy aspect of the book. It's not particularly lengthy, coming in at just over two hundred pages, but most of it is heavy and felt much longer than it actually is. In fact, it took me over a week to finally finish it. It was way too easy to set aside for something that held my interest. The author is talented, there are lots of pretty words and the scene setting is brilliant, but there just wasn't much done with that until the big finish. In the end, the story was more a depressing account of two grieving parents and a failing marriage than dark fantasy. That does come in for the last act, but it felt rushed, and much like my thoughts about Erin, it was way too little, too late. This seems to be one of those books that people will either love it or hate it and after reading the blurb, I really wanted to love it. Sadly, I fall into the latter category and come away quite disappointed.

Charles Hayden is watching his life and his marriage go down the drain. An Affair. His daughter dying. He and Erin have just drifted apart. Then his wife inherits the Hollow family home. Hollow House. Maybe the house, the money, the new start will make everything ok? Charles and Erin don't realize that Hollow House and the Eorl Wood surrounding it hold dark secrets. Very dark secrets.

This story unfolds like a deep, dark, demented fairy tale. An old house sitting in the middle of the deep, dark woods. Legends about disappearances, murder, The Horned God. And an ancestor that wrote a strange, mesmerizing novel about the woods before killing himself. Visions of a dead little girl. What a creepy, awesome story! I loved it! I started reading the book on Halloween night and it ended up being a total binge read. The story sucked me right in and kept me reading until the end.

Dale Bailey has written many short stories and several novels. In the Night Wood is the first book by Bailey that I've read. I enjoyed this story so much that I'm definitely going to read more of his work. I like his writing style. He doesn't hit readers in the face with roaring monsters and jump scares. The horror in this novel was more subtle...more chilling...the sort of scary that sneaks out of the woods at night and waits at the end of your bed while you sleep. I'm definitely reading more by this author!

The cover art for this book is just awesome.

*I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own.*

In the Night Wood by author Dale Bailey is a creepy and suspenseful book that dives into a husband and wife’s life head on. The flow of the story is smooth and the characters fit perfectly. This is definitely a book I would recommend.
Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of In the Night Wood in exchange for an honest review.

A horror novel that goes more for subtly creepy than gorey and terrifying. Charles and Erin are a married couple from North Carolina with problems: their only child, Lissa, has just died, Charles had an affair, and in the aftermath they've both lost their jobs. Salvation comes in the form of Hollow House, an immense Victorian mansion in the Yorkshire countryside, complete with a huge shadowy forest on the grounds and an estate worth millions of dollars, to which it turns out Erin is the distant heir. Her ancestor, Caedmon Hollow, is how she and Charles met in the first place: he wrote a single fantasy novel (a sort of darker Alice in Wonderland) that they both read as children. Charles, an English professor, decides to revive his career by writing a biography of Hollow using the house's archives. Erin doesn't much care what country she's in, lost in memories of Lissa, overdosing on her prescribed antidepressants, and drinking all day long. As so they both relocate to rural England.

The dense imposing forest that surrounds Hollow House lends an uneasy tone to their lives right from the beginning, but it gets worse once they both begin to glimpse a mysterious horned figure under the trees. There is also a series of young girls who look disconcertingly like Lissa, all missing or dead, all with bad fathers. Fatherhood ends up being a major theme of the novel, fatherhood and the price of parenting a child. I don't want to say too much more, since a great deal of the pleasure of In the Night Wood is just figuring out what's going on, but the book draws heavily on English folklore like Cernunnos and Herne the Hunter, the Wild Hunt, Tamlin, and fairy bargains. The writing is ominous and eerie, and does an excellent job of evoking the fear of being lost in the woods. It's not perfect, but it is a very good Gothic novel for the modern age.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2580541245

This story builds very slowly, which is appropriate for the atmosphere it creates. The couple is grieving a loss and trying to continue with their lives, though neither one is doing well at all. It's a very grim plot in general. And the reason I thought it was just "ok" is that there's not much of a fantasy element until the very end. There is a "tale" throughout, but there's a lot of questioning whether or not certain elements are real or if someone is simply drunk, drugged or crazy. It just wasn't all that satisfying to me.

An excellent read for the Halloween season. Multiple plotlines that alternate seamlessly. Outstanding development of the characters. Definitely a candidate to make a good film.
Review provided in exchange for an ARC.

Charles Hayden and his wife Erin first met and bonded over the obscure Victorian fantasy novel In the Night Wood, by Erin’s distant relative Caedmon Hollow. After their daughter’s tragic death on her sixth birthday, however, the two are estranged, trapped in their grief, when they discover that Erin has inherited Hollow House, the ancestral manse where Hollow had lived and written the book, on the edge of one of the oldest forests in Britain. They cross the Atlantic in the hopes of escaping their own demons and, in Charles’ case, of finding material for a biography of the mysterious author. Instead, they find themselves drawn deeper into Caedmon Hollow’s world, where the forest is deep and dangerous, and little girls can get lost forever in the fulfillment of a dark bargain made long ago.

This is exactly the type of book I like—gothic; carefully structured, with people and events echoing and referring to one another; allusive; and deeply rooted in British folklore. I would love to give it 5 stars, and if half stars were allowed I might consider four and a half. Its biggest flaw, however, which I could not ignore, was its portrayal of Charles’ wife Erin, especially considering that she ends up playing a pivotal role at the climax. To me, Erin barely exists at all, as she is consumed by her grief for her daughter. There is reference to her having been an attorney, I believe, but the only time I can ever remember seeing her as a person is at the time of her meeting with Charles. Maybe it’s necessary for the plot and I’m suffering from a failure of empathy (I can’t even imagine how devastating it must be to lose a child), but her obsessive wallowing starts to seem self-indulgent, and it’s hard for me to believe she could rouse herself to the extent she does. Charles also comes off badly in his apparent willingness to allow her to essentially destroy herself, though again, it could be argued that this is necessary to the story. I also found the ending a bit abrupt. Some of the aforementioned problems I had might have been assuaged if we had seen something of what followed and—assuming that Erin might have begun to heal from her grief—a fuller, more rounded picture of her.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

In the Night Wood started off really interesting, but became somewhat dark and depressing as I got further and further into the book. So much so that it made me want to stop reading it altogether. I stuck with it, and found that it picked up in the last chapter, but by then it was too late for me. There was no redemption for the book and it left me feeling sort of sad due to the depressing content (little girls that all look like the dead daughter of the two main characters of the book) and the fact that the two main characters don't really seem to have much personality that endears the reader to them. Charles seems like such a sweet, dorky, likable character in the beginning chapter of the book, but by the end I despised him for his lack of spine and his tendency to have no will power to resist breaking his marriage vows. His wife, Erin, is totally likable in the beginning of the book as well, but by the end she is dosing her grief with pills and alcohol and we see nothing else of her, and know nothing much else about her than the fact that she's a grief stricken mother who is drowning her grief and losing herself in the process.
By the end of the book, it all gets wrapped up, the "Once Upon a Time" has a "The End" but the process of getting there is long and tedious and not one that I would care to repeat.
I do thank #NetGalley for the opportunity to read it and give an honest review. And I apologize that it isn't a more favorable one.

This author packed a lot of story into less than 300 pages! The writing is lush without being dense. If you loved The Hazel Wood, this is its adult sister. It is one of the best books I have read this year. I couldn't put it down. It took me firmly by the hand and said, "Come with me."

This surelly is a very different fairy tale. Pretty dark and full of suspense. I liked how the environment is well developed and you can easily be drawn to the cold, humid and gray house bordered by the wood full of mystery.
I also liked how we are introduced to the characters and their internal thoughts.
I just wished we could have had a faster pass in some chapters and have a larg4r epilogue once the mystery was solved, since the ending was really open.

3.5 stars, rounded up for exceptional atmosphere.

In the Night Wood is a gorgeously creepy, atmospheric tale that blends a number of high gothic tropes into a modern ghost story.

The plot is average to perhaps a tick above average for the genre, competently done with no major flaws but also with nothing that makes it a standout.

Atmospherically, however, it's a triumph. The delightful slow creep of the not-quite-rightness of the townspeople and the house mixed with the overt menace of the woods makes for a perfect backdrop to the principal story.

Charles and Erin made for genre-appropriate (if not particularly likable) protagonists. Though this frustrated me at times, it almost had to be this way. Could we, as readers, really stomach what they endured and how they reacted to it if they had been too lovable? Further, would the plot be able to proceed as it did without the tremendous sense of guilt that radiates from both of them?

While the denouement failed to grip the way the very best gothic offerings do when they reach their crux, I appreciated the way the author provided a concrete ending while leaving the source of the menace in the woods slightly nebulous.

A good effort in all, and a particular joy if you like to "feel" your gothic novels like I do.

I was very excited to read this book-- a lonely boy who stumbled across an obscure fairy tale book grows up and happens to marry the author's distant relative, who then inherits the author's mysterious estate in England. The woods have a presence and come with a lot of local warnings, of course. The main difficulty I had with the book was that the focus was on Charles, who is a complete drip. I didn't care to be inside the perspective of a sleaze without redeeming characteristics, always horndogging on any female character wandering through. There's a better book inside this one which uses Erin as grieving mother as the main focus, giving her more life and relegating Charles to the B plot. I've read a burst of folklore/Creepy Woods books recently, and this one didn't quite work in the framing.

This book is an interweaving of Charles' story and that of a Victorian fairy tale (one that only exists within this book as far as I know) - it draws parallels between the events of Charles' life and superstition, leaving you as the reader to decide what's real and what isn't.

It's a very atmospheric book, featuring a grieving couple that have moved from North Carolina to a rural village in the UK. It has some wonderful cliches on the move, which are classics for a reason! The gothic fairytale style is prevalent throughout the book, which binds the past, present and fictional together - it's a beautiful writing style but wasn't really enough to keep me interested.

The overall feel of this book is very sad, it's mostly about the grief of two parents and the author quite aggressively holds back on the backstory which is then fed in chunks every so often. I prefer either a more subtle approach to plot reveals or starting off with all the information to hand and then see where the narrative takes me.

If you're a more forgiving person and reader than I am, with a love of gothic fairy tales and classic celtic mythology, give this book a shot!

As a young boy, the protagonist, Charles, discovered a book called "In the Night Wood" by Caedmon Hollow and it remained in his mind ever since. As an adult, he sought the book out at university and became a professor teaching literature. He then vows to write a biography of Caedmon Hollow, and he'll have the perfect space to do it in as he goes to live at Hollow House where the author used to live. Bailey's writing is vivid and rich like a savoury butter, especially for the first half of the book. He definitely knows his bibliographical studies quite well with his descriptions of rare books, which was nice to see from a Book History standpoint but might get a bit too detailed for the average reader.

After a tragedy that has created a huge rift in Charles's marriage to Erin, and they go to Hollow House, their marriage is barely hanging on by a thread and they really don't have much else of a choice of where to go because of their situations and to hope that this can be the mark of a new beginning of sorts. Charles, as mentioned above, is determined to write his biography of Caedmon Hollow. The story within a story within a story structure works well here, with the legends going that Caedmon himself used to live at Hollow House (hence the name) but maybe he saw things like The Horned King and the other creatures. There are ciphers to be solved and other mysterious goings on to contend with as well as workers of the house and the townspeople who each seem to be hiding something.

Erin, Charles's wife, over-medicates and drinks herself into a stupor to deal with her grief and anger while Charles buries himself in his work and tries to ignore his own repressed sadness and grief. He also tries to pretend there's not a problem in his marriage, or at least won't acknowledge it outright even though he wants to several times.

Although I found much of the first half of the book gripping, exciting, and page-turning and I couldn't wait to see what happened next, I found that the author dwelled a bit too much on the marital situation between the protagonists and there were some repetitive elements that bogged down the pacing. By the time that things picked up again, it was difficult to renew my interest until near the end.

My other gripe with the novel is that I didn't like either of the protagonists. Some of the other characters were great, but it's asking the reader a huge investment to spend an entire novel with protagonists who are central to the book, and if the reader doesn't find them likable and doesn't root for them, it's difficult to sustain their interest. I understand, of course, that given Charles and Erin's situations that it wasn't easy to make them likable given their circumstances and all they've been through, but as I reached the end and discovered the horrid truth of what happened to cause them such tragedy, I hated Charles even more.

Then again, the most interesting characters are those that make us feel something, even if that happens to be strong dislike in this case, because there's nothing worse than "perfect" and dull characters, so I suppose in that regard, one could argue Bailey did a good job with picking these folks for his protagonists. In any case, that's just a personal reflection and others may have thought they were fine.

Nonetheless, the action picks up towards the end of the book, and I found the ending to be mostly satisfying and it fit with the overall tone of the story. I would definitely recommend horror and fantasy fans pick this novel up, because it's a great autumn read and is one that I think fans of "Sleepy Hollow" and that sort of vibe of horror story will really be quite interested in.