The Forest Grimm by Kathryn Purdie Review

Where fairy tales come to life with dark, deadly twists...
 

"Tell me again, Grandmère, the story of how I die." 

The Midnight Forest. The Fanged Creature. Two fortune-telling cards that spell an untimely death for 17-year-old Clara. Despite the ever-present warning from her fortune-teller grandmother, Clara embarks on a dangerous journey into the deadly Forest Grimm to procure a magical book - Sortes Fortunae , the Book of Fortunes - with the power to reverse the curse on her village and save her mother. 

Years ago, when the villagers whispered their deepest desires to the book, its pages revealed how to obtain them. All was well until someone used the book for an evil purpose―to kill another person. Afterward, the branches of the Forest Grimm snatched the book away, the well water in Grimm’s Hollow turned rancid, and the crops died from disease. The villagers tried to make amends with the forest, but every time someone crossed its border, they never returned. 
 
Now, left with no alternative, Clara and her close friend, Axel―who is fated never to be with her―have set their minds to defying fate and daring to accomplish what no one else has been able to before. But the forest―alive with dark, deadly twists on some of our most well-known fairy tales―has a mind of its own.

Invoking a wonderfully foreboding air of mystery paired with a classic fairytale-like presentation, Kathryn Purdie’s The Forest Grimm is an interesting take on Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Attempting to give bigger context to a few classic fairy tales within an overarching original fantasy story, the novel is a creatively ambitious narrative full of great ideas and inspirations. While not all the ideas are executed to their full potential and I had some notable qualms with certain storytelling elements, The Forest Grimm is a distinctive and imaginative story, albeit one that’s far from perfect.

With a premise centered around a dark fantasy forest with a recurring fanged creature imagery, the story is required to have the right tone for the whole book to work. Fortunately, the ambiance and dark fantasy feel is easily one of the book’s strongest elements. Forbidden forests are nothing new but from the get-go, The Forest Grimm sets the tone perfectly with its decaying village fittingly named Grimm’s Hollow. The folklore-flavored storytelling suits the story wonderfully and once Clara ventures into the Forest Grimm, the general feel of the narrative is great. Obviously inspired by Little Red Riding Hood’s red cape and journey into the woods, the atmosphere of the novel is consistently a big plus and often helped me persevere through the story’s many slower sections (more on that shortly).

Besides the tone, the other notable highlight is Purdie’s creativity with the Grimms’ Fairy Tales inspirations. I won’t mention which tales are used for the sake of spoilers, but those selected are some of the Grimm brothers’ best-known tales which any reader will be able to recognize. While Grimms’ Fairy Tales are already dark, Purdie’s creative and loose use gives them an even darker spin without resorting to violence or shock horror (this is a YA fantasy-romance novel after all). The way these standalone stories are incorporated into the overarching story of The Forest Grimm is good as well as their connection to each other in relation to the novel’s original disappearances/Lost Ones storyline.

While the ideas and general plot of the novel are great on paper, I personally found myself struggling to stay invested in the story due to a variety of factors. This novel is definitively pitched as a YA novel so there is minimal violence, the romance is innocently chaste, and the character motivations simplistic. These are not inherently drawbacks on their own but together, but when they’re layered upon lackluster details, they contributed to an overall middling reading experience for me. While the atmosphere of the story is excellent, the book spends far more time telling the reader about how dark and dangerous the forest and its inhabitants are rather than showing or demonstrating it. Apart from brief spurts of action or intense fantasy chapters (a particular section involving a dream-like hallucinating sequence is excellent), I felt like there was a lack of urgency and sluggish pacing despite the dire circumstances Clara faces. The story’s plot, while well-crafted in theory, feels quite repetitive with Clara wandering lost in the forest, encountering something strange fairy tale related, and then chased off by the Grimm wolf. Additionally, the writing compounds the repetitive feeling by constantly reminding the reader repeatedly about Clara’s fate, her S-curve spine, and her motive of saving her mom. An occasional reminder is effective, particularly for younger readers that may have trouble following the story, but the reminders use the exact same phrases and words verbatim with little variation (there’s certainly more than one way to reference Clara’s physical fragility and pain).

I also took some issue with the novels limited foreshadowing of its plot twists. The story would repeatedly present unexpected twists and reveal that come off as “Oh, that’s interesting…?” rather than surprising. Nearly all these lackluster twist reveals can be attributed to failing to introduce characters, connections, crucial world-building elements, or context earlier in the story for the reveals to land properly. I can’t help but imagine how much more impactful Clara’s encounters with certain Lost Ones in the forest could have been had the reader been introduced to them earlier, such as during the monthly traditional village ceremony or even as simple as Clara discussing them with her friend Henni while resting in the forest. These Lost Ones’ connections to the forest, their disappearances, and their relations to each other could be so much more compelling if the reader actually knows who they were ahead of time. The same could be said about many of The Forest Grimm’s other fantasy elements. I know some other readers have appreciated the story’s blending of different magical elements, but the tarot card-reading, ghosts, a monthly Hunger Games style drawing of names to face to the forest, it felt like a hodge podge mix of YA tropes to me. The story’s finale reveal of the Grimm Wolf’s role in Clara’s fate and life left me downright baffled with a new magic element pulled out of thin air and gave the entire ending sequence an unintentionally comical edge, distracting from the emotional moments that followed it.

Apart from its limited backstory, I also wished that the world building was more detailed and expansive. While this is only the first book of a planned duology, there’s still very little explanation of Grimm Hollow’s past, the focal death wish made upon the magical book Sortes Fortunae, and what causes the lost ones to wonder. A few mysteries are revealed but very little of the premise’s large scope is covered apart from Clara’s cursed fate and her mother’s disappearance. On a smaller scale, I also found myself re-reading certain paragraphs due to missing details or character movements jumping around. Clara and co. would wake up and talk about breakfast only for it to immediately be dark and nighttime right after with no transition for passage of time or Clara would talk about getting more twigs as kindle for a campfire that suddenly exists and is burning before the characters have set up camp. Upon meeting the Grimm Wolf, Clara immediately starts referring to the wolf with feminine pronouns with no thought process or explanation given to how she knows (something as a simple as a “I can feel it in her eyes” would’ve been sufficient) as well as being deathly afraid of it despite there being no signs or context given before-hand to its dangerous nature. Later in the book when they find Ella, she states that she remembers nothing about her past, people, or names yet she somehow remembers her wish made on Sortes Furtunae and its effects which makes little sense considering Ella’s wish itself involved other people she can’t remember. At first I thought I might’ve been reading too deep into the story for a YA novel, but I kept noticing numerous small oversights that didn’t make sense or leaps in logic that could’ve been smoothed out with more time given to the scene.

The character work is another area I felt hindered the emotional impact of its ending. While I liked Clara despite her character being simple, straightforward, and hyper-fixated on her goals, I found the rest of the characters to be very limited and shallow at best. Axel comes off as being charming, humble and a boy (it’s a YA novel which apparently makes him being a boy a noteworthy trait for a teenage FMC) while Clara’s best friend Henni is just timid, careful, and dim-witted (Clara and by extension Purdie’s own words, not mine). The characters across the board felt quite thinly constructed to me, with Henni pulling the short stick of not only being a hindrance to their journey in the forest but also being insufferable for most of the story with little redemption (she does a 180-maturity spike at the end with little to warrant it). And while Henni’s limited development doesn’t necessarily affect the story too heavily considering her limited place in the story compared to Axel, Axel’s limited characterization does actively detract from The Forest Grimm’s secondary fated lovers romance storyline. The romance elements come off as insta-love not due to poor plotting (on the contrary, Purdie’s plotting of this was quite good) but due to poor context. Like the plot twists related to the Lost Ones, the story repeatedly introduces dramatic reveals without setting the proper groundwork or crucial character backstory to make it work. Nearly all romance details are presented off the page in a brief flashback recap near the end of the story that felt both rushed and lazily executed where so many of these past experiences could’ve been reflected on during his time in the forest or back in Grimm’s Hollow following the selection ceremony. While I imagine the romance could be appealing for younger or casual readers, for older readers it’s just confusing due to how undeveloped and sudden it is. The romance element is deeply interwoven into the novel’s main storyline and Clara’s grim fate so it’s not a narrative afterthought, but its execution feels mishandled at best. Some may say that deep character work isn’t necessary since it’s a YA novel, but a good YA story should still have strong character work with their growth and concerns aged appropriately.

Cleverly inspired and plotted, The Forest Grimm is a good fairy tale-inspired novel that could’ve been great if not held back by some notable story-telling shortcomings. With such a wonderful atmosphere and tone, it’s unfortunate that I found the book’s substance lacking. While the pacing was quite slow and often underwhelming for me, I do think that the story could’ve been a lot more compelling if it were far longer and took more time with the smaller details (I’ve read reviews for the sequel that comment both books could’ve been more effective as a longer single standalone novel). And while the Grimm fairy tales featured were interesting, either including more fairy tale inspirations or focusing on each existing one in more detail would’ve helped the story feel more cohesive instead of disjointed vignettes Clara encounters randomly in the forest. I will admit a lot of my sentiments can likely be attributed to YA books being very hit or miss for me in general rather than The Forest Grimm itself, but for fantasy books involving fairy tale retellings and magical forest, I do believe there are better books out there (Kell Woods’ Hansel and Gretel inspired novel After the Forest is coming up soon on my TBR queue).