Title: Don’t Let the Forest In
Author: CG Drews
Publisher: Hodder/Hachette, 2024; RRP $19.99
Review: Marian Chivers, January, 2025

CG Drews (no pronouns given) is the author of two previous novels, A Thousand Perfect Notes and The Boy Who Steals Houses. CG’s work has been translated into five languages and was nominated for the 2020 CILIP Carnegie Medal and won the 2020 CBCA Honour Award. According to the writer’s bio, CG lives in Australia, never sleeps and is forever buried under a pile of unread books.

The cover boasts that “not every fairy tale has a happy ending” and Don’t Let the Forest In fulfills the promise.

The story begins with Andrew reflecting that, “No one would want a heart like his. But he’d still cut it out and given it away.”

Andrew and his twin sister, Dove, are Australian and attend an American New England boarding school for the wealthy. Andrew writes twisted fairy tales for Thomas, “the boy with the hair like autumn leaves”. Thomas loves to draw Andrew’s monsters, but on their return to boarding school after the holidays, the police arrive to questions Thomas, as his parents have disappeared and Andrew notices he has blood on his sleeve.

Thomas is reluctant to talk about his family and Dove won’t talk to Andrew, who is slowly starving himself. In a bid to discover what is going on, Andrew follows Thomas into the forest and catches him fighting a monster from one of Andrew’s stories. Thomas’s drawings have come to life.

To protect the school’s inhabitants, the boys battle the creatures every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew fears the only way to stop them might be to destroy their creator.

This tale will haunt you long after you finish it. There are twists in the plot that I can’t reveal here as it would spoil the story, but it is full of twisted fairy tales and monsters that will destroy your sleep. Along with the external threats there is a lot of internal angst and soul searching that should appeal to those who like their stories to leave them feeling uncomfortable and apprehensive.

As the author says in the acknowledgements at the end: “If you’ve turned the last page and are now frowning at the wall, then everything is as it should be.”

Marian Chivers has a lifelong interest in reading and writing with her work and study involving books from children’s literature to post graduate studies.

Ballarat Writers Inc. Book Review Group
Review copy provided by the publisher