From my NetGalley ARC review:

Hazelthorn is everything I never knew I need in a book and more. I'd previously read Drews' Don't Let the Forest In and fell in love with their writing style, and found a new favorite niche in botanical body horror. When I found out there would be another coming out soon, I knew I had to read Hazelthorn as soon as possible. Everything in Hazelthorn from the writing style to the character descriptions (and yes, I'm counting the manor and gardens as characters here), to the artwork by Jana Heidersdorf to the twists and turns at every corner has me hooked and buried deep in the depths of the conservatory planter boxes.

Evander's descriptions of hunger and the way he feels within his own body makes me feel incredibly understood as a nonbinary autistic person. The constant want to bite and feed and feeling like there's dirt in his throat or things growing under his skin are such incredibly raw and powerful descriptions, while making his emotions so easily understandable - every time he feels the need to feel intense pressure or lack thereof said so many thousands of things in just a few words. It's always a treat to read Drews' descriptions of autistic traits without the word explicitly being said or labeling a character as such.

Laurie on the other hand, I wish I knew more about. We truly only get such a small glimpse of things due to everything unfolding from Evander's POV that I would wholly consume a second version of Hazelthorn from Laurie's perspective just because I need more, more, more of him. But I also understand all the reasons why we don't get anything from Laurie. And I love that we are left not knowing and understanding him fully. Being so alone that he begs a blood thirsty garden for a real friend, knowing it may give him a monster, but not caring if it did, is fascinating, and I think there are so many of us in the world who have felt this way at one time or another in our lives as well. But loving your monster to the point of locking yourself into a crumbling, desolate old manor with it takes things to another level that I'm starting to fully expect from C G Drews' writing.

The rest of the cast of characters are just as interesting, if not a little too okay with murderous rampages. Oleander gives me the vibes that she belongs in a Victorian Gothic while Azalea at first meeting feels like she belongs within the Crazy Rich Asians universe until later when you realize she's just as deep in this as everyone else in the family. Just a little more modern, a little less crazy as the others. Bane is the typical twat trying to get on the good side of those in the family he deems have all the power while being the biggest idiot known to man and not understanding at all how much he is just being used until he is no longer useful. Dawes is a fun one, as we meet him a little earlier than the Lennox-Hall family. At first he just seems a little off, a little strange that he is the one in charge of the estate. But then things unravel in the best way, with the most satisfying ending. And then there's Byron Lennox-Hall himself. A man who seemingly cares for Evander that we find out is actually the Dr. Frankenstein to Evander's monster. Minus the love. He just wants to experiment on this thing the garden has created, see how much he can take before Evander is no longer a functioning human. The way this elderly man has understood for so long that money equals silence to so many, and he truly can do whatever he pleases when the right price is given. And who's to care about money when you have an insatiable garden who can fund everything for you? It's wonderful, and Carrington being his right hand in everything is perfect. (And the joke that Carrington doesn't care is just icing on the cake.)

I'm not a horror fan. Or a body horror fan. But there's something about how C G Drews writes these amazing, witty, fully fleshed out characters who just so happen to end up having these lives, these stories, that I have fallen in love with harder than Evander and Laurie have fallen in love with each other. I want to crawl inside this book and never come out. Hazelthorn is my own version of Evander imagining himself crawling back into the soil for a nice long sleep at the end of the book. There's so many theories I had throughout, and just as many were correct as they were wrong. The one thing I think Don't Let the Forest In lacked for me, was a better balance of keeping the reading on their toes vs letting the reader get something right before the reveal, and Hazelthorn found that balance perfectly for me.