Don't Let The Forest In

Spoilers!!

Hear me out. I didn’t love this book while I was actively reading it.

I’d heard so much hype about it for months, so I meticulously saved it for my AUGtober TBR, expecting a full-blown, atmospheric, dark-gothic horror. I went in completely blind. So when a central YA romance plot started taking up major real estate, I was instantly thrown off. (For anyone wondering, it’s clean YA, but still very prominent!).

While reading, I was honestly kind of annoyed. The pacing is intense. There is so much going on at any given moment; relentless death, gruesome murders, body horror, and grotesque gothic animal monsters hunting everyone down. The forest itself is sentient and actively trying to swallow them whole! And yet... in the middle of all this absolute carnage, our main character is still deeply, obsessively spiraling over whether or not the boy likes him back. I kept thinking: Can we focus on the literal bloodthirsty monsters right now, please?!

And then came that ending. It cuts off, completely ambiguous, leaving you hanging over a cliff without a net. When I closed the cover, I was so done. I set it on my nightstand, ready to rate it a 2.5 or 3 and move on with my life.

...Except I couldn't.

This book completely refused to leave my head. Hours passed, and I found myself constantly trying to "figure it out." I couldn't stop replaying scenes. I ended up down a complete late-night rabbit hole; reading Goodreads threads, Reddit theories, review breakdowns, and interviews with C.G. Drews. That’s when it hit me: I was completely, utterly invested.

"The forest feeds on what you hide."

Looking at the broader reader consensus, people seem divided: some call it a masterpiece of psychological horror, while others are frustrated by the chaos and lack of neat answers. But realization hits when you step back: the ambiguity isn't a bug; it's the entire feature. Drews deliberately constructed a fever dream.

It forces you to grapple with the core questions:

Was Andrew a completely unreliable narrator?

Was everything a hallucination brought on by acute mental breakdown?

Was every terrifying monster real and physical?

Or was the entire nightmare an incredible, bloody manifestation of grief, trauma, toxic obsession, and psychosis?

...Or is our protagonist simply a bloodthirsty, deeply disturbed teenage boy?

If a book can make me feel annoyed while reading it, yet stay lodged in my brain for days/weeks afterward...forcing me to analyze it, research it, and choose which truth I want to believe...it has done something special. It didn't leave me with questions because the plotting was lazy or poorly written. It left me with questions because C.G. Drews wanted to mess with our heads.

Touché, Drews. You got me. Solid 4 stars. 🌲🩸