The story itself is fun and engaging. The problem is in the repetitive nature of the writing. The author likes to state things again and again, multiple times, in triplicate. There is purple prose, and then there is whatever this is. I have never seen so many adjective and adverbs stacked up together. The heap is high, higher, highest. (Yes, that is a standard construction throughout this story.) The way the stories themselves weave together is lovely, even if the back third is a completely different tone. I could work with that if the writing itself wasn't so grating. The poor narrator is actually doing a fantastic job with the material here. She is a saving grace.

A sincere thank you for providing me a copy of "The Waking Forest" in exchange for an honest review. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to read this story and leave my review voluntarily

We follow Rhea a young girl who suffers from nightmares, and a witch, who lives in a magical forest, who grants wishes to children.
I really enjoyed the beginning it was well written and the narrator did a good job telling the story. But then halfway through I just started getting confused and I lost interest in the characters and story.
I really wanted to like this. The storyline seems like a story I would enjoy. I might try to listen to it again or read the book

The Waking Forest is the story of Rhea and a forest witch. Ultimately, their two worlds collide and they must try to survive the truth, no matter how deadly it may be.

Gosh I wanted to like this book. I really did. Unfortunately I did not. I didn't much care for Rhea. The story was littered with purple prose that made it difficult to follow, especially considering the nature of the storytelling. In the end this was not the book for me.

This book is told from the perspective of multiple characters and I was far more interested in the Witch's story than I was about Rhea's. The story was beautifully written, but a bit confusing and hard to follow at times.

ʈᖺᙓ wᗩḱᓮᘉᘐ ℱටᖇᙓᔕʈ
-alyѕѕa weeѕ-
ᴘᴜʙ ᴅᴀᴛᴇ: 28 ᴍᴀʀᴄʜ 2023

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 / 5

I would say the book description is pretty accurate. It was a nice blend of fantasy + sci fi with a little touch of cozy mystery. It’s a lovely little story and I rather enjoyed it, there was just not much going on outside of the book’s description (which is quite accurate which I appreciated). This isn’t necessarily a problem, it just sort of felt anticlimactic after it was all said and done. If you enjoyed Pan’s Labyrinth, I really do think you’d enjoy this. It keeps a nice pace and I didn’t feel like it dragged at all. I read it before bed and it was the perfect bedtime story.

ᴛʜᴀɴᴋs ᴛᴏ ɴᴇᴛɢᴀʟʟᴇʏ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜɪs ᴀᴅᴠᴀɴᴄᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ᴄᴏᴘʏ ғᴏʀ ʀᴇᴠɪᴇᴡ.

I truly wanted to love this book, but it overall missed the mark for me. But I do want to give this author their credit in their absolutely STUNNING ability to build and atmosphere with their beautiful prose that was both melancholic and mysterious. I wanted to rate this read so high just for this alone. The plot, however, was hard for me to connect with.

The first half of the book alternates between Rhea, a girl puzzled by her reoccurring dream that seems to be becoming more and more life like, and The Witch in the Woods, a young witch who grants wishes to others but longs to hear a story of her own. I quite enjoyed the contrast of these two stories happening at once. But as the stories began to overlap and converge, the plot felt too rushed and predictable. I felt I was missing a connection to the characters themselves which hindered me from caring about the conflicts that ensued.

Overall, beautiful writing style, but the plot wasn’t quite strong enough. I’m excited to see what this author may do in the future though, as their ability to paint a picture with words is wonderful.

Thanks NetGalley for the audiobook ARC of this read.

I REALLY loved this one. I listened to this on audio and it helped add to the dream like quality that the writing has. Fantastical, ornate writing flowed from the narrator’s soothing voice. When the plot line is trying to figure out what is real, this helps immensely. The separate stories weave together until they are one, and they are full of fantasy creatures. Nymphs, witches, mantacors, sphinx, and gorgans to name a few, some people blessed with magic while some are not. This was a great escape from reality! It is one that you go back through to see what you missed the first time around.

Rhea lives by the shore with her family. Everything is perfect until it’s night, where they all have very vivid dreams. Rhea finally reaches and opens the door she has been waking up before she reached, and sees a terrible sight. She is also having visions of things that aren’t really there. She sees a boy in the shadows, and she makes a deal with him to take away her curse. And then her family starts disappearing one by one. Will she be able to figure out what is happening before it is too late?

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this audio book.

I'm pretty split in my opinion on this one. It kept my attention at first but then kind of lost focus on the second half. I think I might have better luck with a physical copy, although the narrator was perfectly fine on this! I'll give it another try some other day.

Thank you to Netgalley for proving a copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review. The novel has been out since 2019 but this audio is just becoming available the last week of March 2023.

By the description of the novel, it sound like something I would love. A bit of a dark fantasy/fairytale type of story.
The writing is extremely poetic...almost purple prose. And that led to the story feeling dreamy and all over the place. Like the parts of the story weren't connecting for me. This caused me to not really care what happened to the characters either in the plot or romance. I really wish I could have enjoyed this one more because I know there is definitely an audience for this story and the beautiful writing. It just wasn't writing that aided this type of story.

The Waking Forest is a pretty and unusual book, reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, but turned around to give us a princess with agency. This is a good YA read.

The writing in this book is beautiful but unfortunately the story fell short around the 60% mark for me.
This story has two storylines. One timeline is of a girl living in our world with her sisters. They all seem a little odd, having interesting dreams. When Rhea opens a door in her dream things start to unravel in her life. Her family members disappear one at a time and she makes a friend with a boy made of darkness.
The second timeline is the story of a witch in the woods who grants wishes. She is told a story by a boy who keeps coming to visit her.

Essentially this book was a story inside a story inside a story. Unfortunately when the stories come together it began to fall apart. The story became hard to follow and the ending just fell a little flat.
I think that people will still enjoy reading it and the audiobook was good. The narrator did a good job.

A wonderfully dreamy and magical fairytale. The writing style is so beautiful and whimsically poetic. I really enjoy writing like this that is almost as much about the words and how they make you feel, as it is about the actual plot of the story.

I found the concept really interesting, like a traditional fairy tale twisted into something new. And the different pieces of the story are woven together so well that it held my attention all the way through.

The narration was perfectly fine, I don’t feel like it added any extra atmosphere or dimension to the story but nothing about it took away from it or was particularly distracting to me while listening either.

Can we talk about how perfectly atmospheric this story is? I felt as if I was walking through the forest and lived the colors described. I also loved the beautiful prose.
I did feel a bit less enamored with the second half of the book and found the receptiveness unnecessary.
overall this was a lovely story and enjoyed listening to the wonderful narrator!

The Waking Forest by Alyssa Wees
4/5 Stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

•••Spoiler free review below•••

The Waking Forest tells two stories in one. In our world, Rhea is plagued by nightmares and the only one who seems to understand is the boy in the shadows. In the magical woods, we follow the forest witch who grants wishes to children in need and spends her nights speaking with a fox who tells her stories.

This is a story of magic, love, loyalty, and the things that we see in the dark. When our stories collide, the adventure begins, and I promise you'll be rooting for our main characters as much as I was.

Read this book if you like:
- wish granting witches
- a strong bond of sisterhood
- interweaving stories
- dream magic
- friendship that spans worlds
- unique magic with world building as you read

The Waking Forest is available in digital and print and will be newly released in audio on March 28th. If it's not already on your tbr, it should be!
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Special thanks to Dreamscape Media for sharing a free copy with me in exchange for my honest opinions.

March 18, 2023
3.5 stars
You start off with two different stories going on. You hear or rather read about a witch who lives in the woods and grants wishes to kids. The other perspective is our main female lead and she suffers from nightmares, sleep walking, hallucinations and a couple other things. She lives with her parents and sisters, has a pet fox. But everything is weird. She’s happy but life doesn’t feel right. She dreams of the attic and decides to face her fears and sleep up there but while laying in the dark a boys voices comes from the shadows of the attic. She doesn’t know this boy, can’t see him but he “feels” familiar.
He makes a deal with her, if she can guess his name he will lift her curse. But now her family starts disappearing one by one and it’s up to her to save them.
But now reality doesn’t seem much like reality anymore. And she questions if this life is real.

Possible spoilers ahead-
In general I thought the book was OKAY. It’s not poorly written, nor is the plot or storyline lacking in any way really; to me there just wasn’t enough action - and that’s just my own personal taste, I like a lot of action.
The suspense and mystery aspect of it was great - and although I was confused for a couple minutes when it was a dream within a dream - and then she was in her real world and trying to match all her sisters names to creature/ people she was gathering.
But it was unexpected and I enjoyed that aspect of it.
All in all a decent read/ listen- lady who did the audiobook version did a great job.


I will be doing a separate review on my YouTube channel within the next week.

Rhea has visions of a forest no one else can see. The Witch calls the forest home, and children visit her there to have their wishes granted.

The first half of this book was great. I really enjoyed seeing the two storylines intertwine, and the spookiness really hit. I adored the Witch storyline especially--the strange, dark fantasy elements, the flower in her chest that she plucks petals from to grant wishes, her collection of little pieces of people that she takes as payment. The prose was dreamy and flowery, perfect for the story (overdone once in a while, sure, but overall really fed the tone of the book). Unfortunately, all the dreams and visions and intertwining timelines are resolved at the midpoint. And then we just have a magic-princess-needs-to-save-her-kingdom-from-the-big-bad-baddie YA fantasy thing, and it feels like a completely different book. There were very few things from the second half that I enjoyed, and most of the lines or moments that I found really corny were in that part. After everything, it was just...unsatisfying. It's difficult to describe without spoilers, but one of the biggest disappointments was that our protagonist ends up feeling like a very inconsistent person, and a lot of her got left behind by the end. Also! I was really hoping for some kind of contextualization for the symbolism and body-horror-esque aesthetic of the Witch, and that also just kind of didn't happen.

Katelyn Levering did a great job with the narration. I'm easy to spook, but I'm also quick to laugh if dramatic stuff is over-acted in audiobooks. Katelyn delivered the spook very well, and I really felt Rhea's uneasiness and was never yanked out of the story. The best narrators make you forget you're not just listening to the character, and I think Katelyn pulled that off with this one.

All in all, this baby gets three stars for the stuff that I did like and for all its potential.

Thank you to NetGalley for the audiobook ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a dark and grim novel about family, loss, and self-mastery. It has great potential, and I enjoyed it enough to finish the audiobook. Sometimes I struggled to follow the complex and twisted storylines, which jump from one plane of existence to another. Yet, the imagery and wordsmith are spot on with almost a poetic, gritty feel.

It was a unique read for me, and I’m glad to extend myself to alternative writing style.

“Sometimes we can have a say in the way we fall apart.”

This was so much darker than I was expecting! With heavy themes of grief, loss, and how difficult it can be to be the only one who remembers a loved one who is gone. The first half to two-thirds of the book were emotionally raw, that by the time the secret identities were revealed you felt utterly fatigued. While this did have a happy ending, it felt lukewarm after such a powerful opening.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the opportunity to listen and review.

I received this arc as an audio book. I found it very hard to follow along and confusing at times. The narrator was also drab. I would recommend reading this versus audio so you can 100% focus on the storyline. I will give it another try that way :)