As I read Hazelthorn I searched for the right words to describe it: unique, original, addictive, disturbing, psychologically horrific … tragic. It’s has “a terrible beauty” as Keats or Yeats might have said. It’s the most superb gothic romantasy I’ve ever read—something Byron and Shelley might have devoured. Really, words are inadequate. You’ll have to read it yourself to understand and feel its effects. Know it will haunt you.

Every line is strangely lyrical, painted with intensity and shadowed with darkness, and yet, the story ends wrapped in ribbons of sunlight. If you open to any page, you’ll find something quoteworthy.

“He is not a bird meant for flight; he is broken wings and forgotten petals left to dry between pages of an old book and he doesn’t know how to believe he could be anything else” (259).

Evander. The boy on the cover smothered by thorns. Locked up and drugged for years in a musty room in a billionaire’s mansion—confused and imprisoned until one day someone unlocks his door and sets him free.

Laurie. The billionaire’s grandson. Beautiful, sarcastic, witty, hurting, desperate, desolate. The object of Evander’s affection, though Evander hates him, justifiably. Laurie attacked Evander when they were ten, beat him and cut him and tried to bury him alive in the garden.

Now they’re seventeen living in a mansion choked by gardens and greenery capable to murder. Grasping at an insane obsession.

And the billionaire’s been murdered. Laurie’s grandfather. Evander’s jailer.

The cover says it all. Evander, embraced by the garden, his flesh ravaged by thorns, his blood oozing. Since the garden had a taste of his blood, it wants him back. The theme of this story is guilt eclipsed by greed. You won’t believe it.

But the message is love.

This is Young Adult Romantasy at its finest … and darkest.

Like the garden, I want more.