botanical horror for the win!!! a 3.75

I finally picked up a c.g. drews after hearing nothing but good things about their writing and wow!!! I looooved the writing style in this, it was definitely the driving force of the novel for me. beautiful. haunting. visceral. tender and hella creepy. c.g. drews writing made the story come alive, the scenes and setting burrowed in my bones and I fear that I'll forever remember some of the scenes in here.

if you're looking for yearning, pick this up. I've not read such agonizing and soul stirring yearning since my fan fiction days. I felt so much for andrew as he tried to figure out his feeling for thomas and his sexuality.

that ending had me staring at the wall (well played drews...well played) and I don't know if I can even believe andrew after figuring out that he was an unreliable narrator but it just made me want to immediately go back from the beginning and read it with this new information. I throughly enjoyed my time with don't let the forest in and I will be picking up another c.g. drews soon!!!

slightly disappointed because this was a 5 star prediction but I'm settling for a 3.5.

my main gripe with this was the writing style and the pacing. I don't know what it was about the writing but I felt it gave YA vibes???? I felt the writing was simple, it didn't take its time describing the settings we found the characters in. I also did not feel that it took its time taking us from scene to scene, I can't tell you the amount of times I had to backtrack because I thought I had missed a detail or paragraph but nope....it was just the writing style.

the pacing was way too quick for me as well. when you got the main leads already bickering and flirting with each other, kid you not, 50 pages in I'm not going to be happy about it. they kissed for the first time 44% in and the rest of the book continued to be them almost doing it up until the big battle scene at the end.

while I wasn't happy with how fast the romance in the book happened I do got to admit that elara and enzo were cute as hell together and enzo??????? WHAT A MAN !!! he had some serious game and it genuinely had me giggling and blushing.

now to the positives, despite the writing and the pacing I was never bored while reading. there was always something happening to move the plot along. I also liked the world building and the magic system. the different kingdoms were fascinating and the celestial based magic imbued with some greek mythology influences was fresh and new!!! there's star gods, myths, winged lions and prophecies!!! truly a bit of everything that I thought fused really well.

also elara is really fucking cool, I loved her character and the way she fights her way through everything. truly that first introduction we had of her set the tone to her personality so well, she is fierce, strong and protective of her loved ones.

I'm not really jazzed about the ending, I thought it would take the yearning and suffering path, the alternative is not a journey that I'm particularly excited to read about...there is some curiosity though so it could very much happen but this is not a series that I'll be prioritizing.