Andrew's return to boarding school should be a return to all that's normal and right, but his twin Dove and their best friend Thomas aren't talking, and the police are questioning Thomas. And that's the normal part of his year. Andrew writes brothers grim style fairy tale vignettes and Thomas gives them life with macabre illustrations. Literally, and now Andrew and Thomas are fighting every night for their lives and the lives of their classmates.

Lyrical and haunting Don't Let the Forest In captures the feeling of being a mentally ill high school senior disturbingly well, and then takes it further. This is a story that will make you ask "what the fuck?" again and again.
Horrifically beautiful and deliciously fucked up, it's a plot driven story that will terrify you and leave you questioning the narrative's reality. C. G. Drews is a wordsmith. Highly recommended for horror and dark academia fans, and it might be worth a read for others for the prose and vignettes alone.

The ending leaves too much unanswered for my personal preferences, but I believe that is a convention of dark academia. I don't feel the content warning list in the book is comprehensive but some of them could definitely be massive spoilers so I understand why. I personally would have wanted this warning so I'm putting it below a spoiler.

The Tik Tok video is in my drafts so expect it later this week

This book sounded like a perfect spooky season read! The book started off quite well and I was pretty hooked in. But then I started losing interest and getting confused. I think this book has so many directions it wanted to go in but it just couldn’t be fully fleshed out. I liked this book, but I wanted so much more.

This story is dark, hauntingly beautiful, disturbing and full of teenage angst and I continue to think about even a week after finishing it. I felt like I was peeling back the layers of what these boys were feeling and finding something totally unexpected. This book was both terrifying and beautiful and it was really hard to let it go.

Andrew is the sole narrator of this story, and even from the beginning, before all of the horror begins, you get the sense that he is not a reliable narrator. We know from the start that something bad happened at the end of the previous school year, that has broken the friendship between him, his best friend Thomas, and his sister. Andrew is friendless except for Thomas, and his grief over what is going on is palatable from the start. His unreliable narration continues as the monsters reveal themselves and the barrier between reality and nightmares becomes blurred. By the end of the story I still wasn’t sure how much of the story was real or imagined by Andrew. I really felt Andrew’s pain as he tries and at times fails to navigate his emotions about himself and those for Thomas, and even why he is protecting a school that has never protected him. I loved the beautiful relationship between him and Thomas and fragile it was at the beginning, but it eventually becoming something stronger.

The writing was what I really liked about this story. It was so beautiful and so descriptive that I had no trouble imagining the monsters and the horrors that these two boys went through. I was right there with them in the forest and the halls of the school as they fought to save each other and the school. I understand that there will be illustrations in the final book, which will add a marvelous layer to the story. The pacing was solid, with some nice quiet moments between the characters after the horror of the monsters. The blending of the themes of friendship, love, grief, discovering and accepting yourself amongst all of the horror was beautifully done. The ending was somewhat open, in that we are not sure what happens to the boys, but there was some implied closure, that while not happy, was at least an ending.

This book won’t be for everyone. It is disturbing in some ways, and if you don’t like unreliable narrators, than this isn’t for you. But if you like emotional stories about grief, acceptance and self discovery hidden inside a horror story, this is one you don’t want to miss.

“It was a school for brilliance, for fixating on the stars until you grew tall enough to reach them.”

“Andrew hated the way his brain did this. Destroyed beautiful things.”

“If the trees belonged to Thomas, midnight was in love with Andrew.”

“October arrived with cold teeth sharp enough to split bone.”

This book was beautiful in the most cold and dark of ways. From the beginning, it is clear that there is something deeply unsettling about Andrew, Thomas, Dove, and the boarding school they all attend, Wickwood Academy.
Andrew writes grim, dark fairy tales and Thomas draws them, both boys having darkness inside them that comes to life in their respective art--or in Thomas’s case, quite literally comes to life. The boys battle the monsters that come to life in the woods of Wickwood Academy, and through their battles, you start to see a much darker tapestry unravel.
I spent weeks after reading Don’t Let the Forest In to try to articulate just how unsettled I was after the last page. Drews had a hauntingly beautiful way of describing obsession in this book. There are layers as to why the obsession starts and how each character feels and acts on their infatuation with the woods, the dark, the macabre, and each other. Don’t Let the Forest In should be read on a dark and dreary day with a hot drink in hand as you sit by the window--preferably, close to wooded land so you can stare and sigh as the monsters come to life.
#DontLettheForestIn #NetGalley

4.25

Firstly, thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early review copy.

In Dont Let the Forest In we follow Andrew during his senior year of school. Almost immediately we get warned the forest is off limits. Based on the title alone you just KNOW something creepy is going down in there.

In the first couple chapters we are already in a position to root for and feel empathy towards Andrew. His dad is dropping off him and his sister Dove to school and we can see theres some animosity there. Something happened at school that his Dad has cause to worry about him going back.

The author does an amazing job of building this tension from page one. Why wouldnt his dad want him and Dove to go back? Once at school we meet Andrews best friend Thomas and their friendship starts to unspool before our eyes.

My favorite thing about this book was the atmosphere and the foresty imagery. I felt the tension and you could cut it with a knife. In places I felt like I could SMELL the moss and dried leaves. The descriptions were so lush and poetic. Also the way the creepy nature crept up on you!? Then all of a sudden I was too scared to keep reading in the dark! *chefs kiss*

Another thing I loved about this book is that for a YA book it got REALLY grotesque and downright dark and creepy in places. The author didnt shy away from dark imagery and I really appreciate when YA authors dont hold back. Teens and young adults are inherently smart and deserve good old fashion creepy/scary books too!

I think the only thing that kept this book from being a 5 stars for me is that shortly after Andrew arrives at school I did find the pace to lag ever so slightly, but once I hit that 30% mark I could not put it down.

Summary: "Psychological horror will leave readers breathless and hesitant to venture deeper into the woods."
"Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him. Kill for him."

Review: Weird, gory, dark academia... count me in! I think author was very successful with the hole "creepy forest" topic. That was chef's kiss! It gets under your skin and makes you all itchy. A+. Please remember to read CW before starting your read.

Thank you NetGalley for my copy!

#DontLettheForestIn #NetGalley

If the cover calls to you, changes are you will love this - brutal and beautiful, this is the embodiment of thorny purple prose, where dark fairy tales and monsters mix with unreliable narrators until you're not sure what's real and what's metaphor anymore, unsure if that creeping feeling along your leg is just nerves or a vine, unseen and lying in wait.

Don't Let the Forest In achieves one of my favorite sorts of unreliable narrators - where you know Andrew is unreliable, but there's just enough to make you question just what parts of what he's experiencing are real and which aren't, right up until the very end. You get sucked in to the world of thorns and forests and flowers and rot, so involved that you don't know what to think when you start to want it to be real instead of just a cautionary tale.

Did I go into this book expecting a gothic, dark-academia adjacent horror novel soaked in plant horror? Yes. Did I expect to be left reading deep into the night, gripped by each page and crying at 2am because I NEEDED to know what happened to Andrew and Thomas? No but that’s damn well what happened.

"If the trees belonged to Thomas, then midnight was in love with Andrew.”

Andrew escapes into his own twisted fairytales to survive the everyday, and Thomas pens them into beautifully haunting illustrations – that come to life and start tearing the boys apart. This is where we enter DON’T LET THE FOREST IN, a twisted fairytale in its own right, filled with angst, yearning, gore and all manner of forest-dwelling nightmares. This novel is friends to lovers, but the lovers want to crawl inside each other. It’s YA horror where the monsters are on almost every single page and inside our main character’s head even more. This is everything I loved about The Raven Boys but taken to another level. It’s the vibe of Adam Parrish agreeing to be the forests’ eyes and ears but more, reaching into our Andrew’s heart and wrapping around his bones. It’s magic and grief and longing and the horror of what our own brains can conjure, and I loved it.



CHARACTERS

Well, I’m mark Andrew down as another feral but anxious MMC I’ll lay my life down for. I swore that I’d stop collecting weird little fictional loves (affectionate) to cram into the valves of my heart, but Andrew is made of broken glass and needs to be Protected. Of course, he is also so much stronger than he expects himself to be, and has made himself to feel – Thomas knows this.

However, DON’T LET THE FOREST IN is an exploration of a boy on the edge, of a clever and brave teen pushed past the point of wellness because of something terrible (hello, plot twist I was not expecting but definitely should have been), and it doesn’t take much for him to begin slipping away. The forest is a metaphor for SO many feelings, and Andrew is certainly loved by it. His emotions and the forest both constrict him, following him wherever he goes, tripping him as he walks until he’s running from foes in the daylight when everyone knows you’re supposed to be safe from monsters. Just not these ones. He is poetic and angsty, so filled with emotions that he’s bursting at the seams, and so desperately in love with his best friend Thomas. Andrew also offers gorgeous aromantic rep, and his story of acceptance and discovery is one that haunts the halls of this story as much as the forest-monsters do.

Thomas is similarly an incredibly rich character, a foil to much of Andrew’s anxiety. They make a hell of a pair in the forest, working together to keep the monsters away from the school, and being ripped apart every night in the process. Thomas is much of the reason that Andrew finds his strength, and Thomas is likewise a catalyst for his own growth. Get you a boy who would answer ‘yes’ immediately when asked if he’d sacrifice himself for you – and then try everything to make sure he doesn’t have to. Thomas is that typical ‘hates everyone but one person’ character, but he’s been given a softer side that contrasts so wonderfully with the person he is when he’s protecting Andrew.

The friends to lovers trope is exquisitely explored, growing as naturally and organically as the vines that wind themselves around both boys every evening in the forest. DLFTI takes high-school angst and rams up thirteen notches until everything is life and death – but for the genre we’re sitting in, this works. Everything IS life and death, for Andrew specifically. But when nightmares and drawings come to life, and you don’t know who or what to trust especially yourself, that long-harboured crush becomes something much more all-consuming.



PLOT/STORY

I found that the pacing of DLTFI moved perfectly, with just enough of a breather between each horrifying encounter with Thomas’s drawings come to life that I was able to really feel the consequences of each, while the threat was maintained. Drews’ prose brought to life things that everyone sees in the dark of the forest and chucks them into the supposedly safe halls of a private school, which is just the dichotomy that I think I loved most about this novel, and the horror genre as a whole. DLTFI encapsulates that feeling of ‘but I should be safe here’ and then turns it on its head.

When Andrew returns to school, we know that something has gone horribly wrong. But Andrew is an unreliable narrator, and so we never truly find out what happened during his last academic year until right at the end, when the stakes are highest and when the reveal is most impactful. I’m a fan of unreliable narrators, and this was so well done that the reveal took me by surprise, even as an incredibly suspicious reader – I was just SO engrossed in Andrew’s state of mind, in his relationship with Thomas, with Dove his twin sister, and his steadily unraveling life.

We follow Andrew and Thomas in their attempts to discover why Thomas’s drawings have started coming to life and terrorising them at school. But interspersed with the sort of horror that grows increasingly hard for them to hide, and increasingly takes its toll on their mental and physical wellbeing, is a story of queerness, of familial relationships, and of YA coming to age. Andrew is navigating a myriad of emotions, and Drews manages to capture the uprooting feeling of finding (and losing) yourself as a young person in a wonderful way.

The prose is PACKED with imagery, and as a lover of description and emotive language, I was absolutely living my best life. It’s like every sentence is diffused with life, dripping with emotion, caked in imagery as thick as soil, and I loved it. I’m a firm fan of lush prose, and DON’T LET THE FOREST IN has this in droves.

Quite simply, this was an addictive and emotional tale that gripped me and didn’t let go. I cried for Andrew and Thomas both and I look a little differently at the forest now when I walk through it.

**I received an electronic ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.**

CG Drews presents their take on YA horror with Don't Let the Forest In. Readers follow Andrew as he returns to his senior year at Wickwood Academy. Everything is the same. Same bullies. Same teachers. Same Thomas. Thomas who is the prince of his stories and is made of monsters. Andrew writes and Thomas draws. But Dove, Andrew's twin, is refusing to talk to them now. Before it was the three of them. And Andrew has new scars on his hand that no one wants to talk about. Andrew knows he needs Thomas, but doesn't he need his twin too? When the monsters of Thomas' drawings start crawling out of the forest and attacking students, Andrew and Thomas have to do something. Who will pay the tithe?

This novel is curling up in a library and viewing the comfort of academia from just slightly out of frame. Until ink bleeds onto the picture and makes it something macabre and wicked. It is gore and body horror and the dread of things watching from the dark. This is everything I could have hoped for from a book like this.

Andrew and Thomas are codependent and toxic and I love them so much. Each of them are exploring their queerness and what that means for them. Not individually. They are inherently intertwined and can't be separated.

I see where this book won't be for everyone. But it is absolutely for me.

For those of you who were swept away in the mind games of The Wicker King, the poetry of If We Were Villains, and the burrowing dread of Summer Sons. This one is for you.

Solid book, I loved the atmosphere the book gave off paired with the way in which it flowed. I am hoping to get a copy when it is published.

Wow, so dark and beautiful. Drews’ writing is both ominous and poetic. She balances the nuances of teen angst with gothic horror so well. At times this felt more teen drama/love story than horror, and at others it felt more horror fantasy, but seeing what is revealed and where we end up, both sides of this story weave so beautifully together.

I highlighted so much beautiful imagery and lovely prose. As I went to fetch a quote to feature in this review, none feel more fitting than the dedication - “For the monsters in your head.”

The positives:

The writing is hauntingly beautiful. It’s been a long time since I’ve read something so darkly flowery and disturbingly poetic.

The queer representation with an asexual main character is lovely. Also, the queer LONGING was beautiful.

I loved the depiction of mental health struggles. It felt very real and made you ache.

The monsters were SCARY. I literally couldn’t sleep the first night that I started reading this book because I was so scared haha.

There was a GREAT reveal/plot twist!!!

My only complaint:

The only reason I didn’t give this book five stars was because I have no idea how it ended or what happened or what was real. Literally no clue, maybe I’m too literal and didn’t understand???? So yeah, the ending is a mystery to me, and that was a little infuriating, but the ride was good before that so 😅

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan for giving me an e-arc for an honest review

Eh. I don't know what to say about this one. It does the creepy heavy vibe well. It just never felt like it had reached its full potential. Overall it just felt messy and never really grabbed me, I however am not the targeted audience. I do think that demographic is going to eat this up. The ending left me exasperated.

Thanks to netgalley for the eARC.

Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him.

This was excellent! Great characters, great setting, great atmosphere. I loved it!

Andrew has been writing gothic tales for an audience of two for almost as long as he remembers: Dove, Andrew's twin sister, and Thomas, the jagged boy whose drawings bring Andrew's stories to life. But as the new school year at the trio's boarding school kicks off things are not as they've been. Dove is avoiding the boys, angry with them for reasons Andrew cannot parse. Thomas's parents are missing and Thomas is a suspect in their murders. Andrew is doing his best to hold himself together. As Thomas withdraws more and more, Andrew gives chase to hold onto at least the friendship that he wishes were more. In the dark of the school woods, Andrew finds that Thomas's drawings of Andrew's stories have been coming to life to hunt the artist. The two boys set about keeping each other safe and trying to find away of putting the monsters to rest.

The gothic prose of this book settled directly into my bones and made a home there. The emotion of the novel bleeds through every sentence drawing the reader into Andrew's anxieties and fixations with few questions. Characters and reader alike know that no one's choices are healthy much less sustainable and yet every one feels so inevitable. The world Drews builds is not kind. It is not welcoming or forgiving. Loss waits around each page turn. But in the face of grief and Andrew's loosening control, Drews offers not hope but the dedication of a hyper dependent friendship that never sat within the lines of the platonic. The world may never offer comfort but the friend you've been secretly in love with since you were children might choose to take all the demons on for you anyway. And isn't that what gothic horror is for? Suppressing grief until it takes physical form and co dependent relationships that both damn and save.

I really enjoyed this book. It felt like it was written for me because it had messy boys, forest horror, dark academia, and queer representation. The prose is good but it felt like it was trying too hard. Really interested in reading the final version of this novel!

‘ “If you cut open my chest” - Andrew’s voice was wrecked - “you’ll find a garden of rot where my heart should be.” ‘

Just wow… I was enthralled from the very first page and would have happily devoured this book in one sitting had time allowed it. It’s definitely going in my list of favorite books of 2024, if I could give it more than 5 stars I would!

Don’t Let the Forest In is haunting, eerie, and unearthly. After reading it I feel like I have become one with the forest and the rot. It got into my flesh and bones and will fester here until I find something of equal quality. This book leaves the reader feeling on edge and haunted the entire time, and is the perfect Halloween read.

Andrew and Thomas are toxic and codependent, their reality will make you question what is real and what is a figment of their damaged minds.
Don’t Let the Forest In is simultaneously horror and comfort, the characters are raw and unhinged but so delightful in their affection for each other.

C.G. Drews is an author to keep your eye on, as I for one can’t wait to get my hands on their future works! For now I will continue to decay in the forest with the monsters and the mystery.

‘They were beautiful together; they were magic and monstrous, and they had created a whole vengeful world between them.’

Thank you so much, C.G. Drews and Netgally for this haunting ARC!

Thank you so much NetGalley and Macmillan Children’s Publishing for this eARC!

I loved this book! It checked my favorite boxes from a YA novel. Boarding school, classic jump scares, super weird and terrifying monsters, secrets and suspense, complex relationships, and running around in dark forbidden woods.

I found each of the “stories meant to feel like paper cuts” to be so poetic and morbidly lovely.

Overall, the book scratched my deep itch for a well written scary story. A great fall read. 10 out of 10

Amazing. Absolutely loved this book and made me keep turning the pages to find out what happened next !!

4.5/5 stars

This took a minute for me to get into (hence it not being 5 stars) but the lyrical prose pulled me into the story to the point where I stayed up until 2:00am on a work night to finish it. Beautifully terrifying story.