Book Review: Don't Let The Forest In

Author: CG Drews 

Title: Don't Let the Forest In 

Genre: YA, Horror, Fantasy, Queer/LGBTQIA+, Botanical 

Number of Pages: 336 

Plot Summary: Andrew Perrault returns to Wickwood Academy eager to reunite with his best friend, Thomas, the artist who illustrates the monsters from Andrew's dark fairytales. But Thomas returns to school with blood on his sleeve and a terrible secret: his parents have been murdered, and Thomas is a suspect. As Thomas becomes increasingly distant and begins disappearing into the forbidden forest surrounding their school, Andrew follows him and discovers something impossible. The monsters Thomas has drawn are coming to life. With the creatures growing more dangerous and questions surrounding Thomas's past piling up, Andrew becomes determined to uncover the truth and protect his best friend, even if following him into the forest means confronting horrors neither of them understands.

My Verdict: I give Don't Let the Forest In a solid 4.5/5. The premise immediately drew me in, but the plot is what made me stay. The idea of an artist's drawings of monsters coming to life and terrorizing the artist was wild, and I needed to understand why it was happening. I genuinely had no idea where the story was going for most of the book. Every time I thought I was starting to figure it out, something would happen that made me question what I thought I knew.

The atmosphere was probably one of my favorite parts of the book. Wickwood Academy has such strong dark academia vibes with its isolated rural setting, art and literature, old buildings, and the creepy forest surrounding the school. There is also something unsettling about watching all of these rich kids remain mostly oblivious to what Andrew and Thomas are experiencing. Life at Wickwood continues around them while the two of them are sneaking into the forest and fighting literal monsters. It makes their experiences feel even more isolated from everyone else.

I also loved how important art and storytelling are to the horror itself. Andrew writes dark fairytales and Thomas illustrates the monsters he creates, so something that connects the two boys creatively becomes the thing that terrorizes them. Their stories and drawings aren't just character details added to make them seem artistic. Creation has consequences in this book. The monsters are incredibly personal because they come from something Andrew and Thomas have made together, and I think that makes them much more interesting than if they were simply creatures that already existed in the forest.

Andrew and Thomas's relationship is just as central to the story as the monsters. There is so much yearning and longing between them, but there is also an incredible amount of frustration. I did get bored around the halfway point because they are both so whiny. So much of their conflict could seemingly be solved if they would just communicate with each other. There were several moments when I wanted them to stop avoiding conversations and actually say what they were thinking.

At the same time, their inability to communicate is part of what makes their relationship work within the larger story. They are both hiding things from each other while desperately trying to protect one another. Love, fear, secrecy, and obsession start to tangle together. Their relationship can feel almost claustrophobic at times, which fits a story in which the forest is also slowly becoming more threatening and harder to escape. I was frustrated with them, but I was also completely invested in what would happen to them.

I especially appreciated Andrew being asexual. It's not often that I read a book with an asexual main character, and I liked that his asexuality exists alongside such an intense romantic relationship. Andrew's feelings for Thomas are full of longing, intimacy, jealousy, fear, and love. The book doesn't treat asexuality as an absence of feeling or an inability to experience this kind of consuming attachment to another person. Considering how much of this story revolves around Andrew's feelings for Thomas, I thought that representation was especially meaningful.

The forest itself also becomes more than just a creepy setting. The deeper Andrew and Thomas get into what is happening, the more oppressive it feels. Wickwood is already isolated, but the forest creates another boundary around them. There is this constant sense that something is wrong just outside the normal world of the school, and Andrew is drawn further and further into it. That uncertainty was one of the strongest parts of the book for me because I was never completely sure how much I could trust what Andrew understood about what was happening.

That's ultimately why the plot worked so well for me. The book kept making me question what was real, what Andrew understood, and what I might be missing. I don't want to get too far into the ending because I think going into this book without knowing where it is headed makes it much more fun. I certainly wasn't prepared for where it went.

The middle dragged enough that I couldn't quite give Don't Let the Forest In five stars, but everything else worked for me. The atmosphere was fantastic, the premise was original, the horror felt personal to the characters, and the plot genuinely kept me on my toes. Add in dark academia, a rural boarding school, a creepy forest, complicated queer relationships, asexual representation, and an incredible amount of yearning, and this was very much a book for me.

Subject Headings: 

Boarding schools -- Fiction

Monsters -- Fiction

Artists -- Fiction

Asexual people -- Fiction

Similar Authors: 

Rory Power — atmospheric YA horror, isolated settings, body horror, and complicated relationships. Wilder Girls is probably the closest overall comparison.

Krystal Sutherland — gothic, unsettling YA horror with strange transformations, fairy-tale elements, and messy relationships. House of Hollow especially fits.

Andrew Joseph White — queer YA horror with body horror, intense relationships, and characters dealing with identity alongside genuinely disturbing horror.