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3.5 

After the Forest

By Kell Woods
After the Forest by Kell Woods digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

After the Forest is a dark and enchanting fantasy debut from Kell Woods that explores the repercussions of a childhood filled with magic and a young woman contending with the truth of “happily ever after.”

Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour.

Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people starving in the aftermath of a brutal war.

Greta has a secret, though: the witch's grimoire, hidden away and whispering in Greta's ear for the past two decades, and the recipe inside that makes the best gingerbread you've ever tasted. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat.

But in a village full of superstition, Greta and her mysteriously addictive gingerbread, not to mention the rumors about her childhood misadventures, is a source of gossip and suspicion.

And now, dark magic is returning to the woods and Greta's magic—magic she is still trying to understand—may be the only thing that can save her. If it doesn't kill her first.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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939 Reviews

3.5
“I was SO EXCITED about this one. Hansel and Gretel has always been one of my favorite fairytales. The darkness, the horror fascinated me. The premise for this was great. But..... it fell flat. The book was strange, but not in a good way. The story was rushed, but slow. I felt no connection to the characters. There were so many characters that it had to keep them straight. They'd show up in the story as if you were supposed to already know them and something about them. It was confusing. The first half of the book was painfully slow. It started to get interesting halfway through, when the story starts to change as Greta starts to - finally - know something about the magic in her life. But then the last quarter of the book was VERY strange and just didn't fit. Suddenly, Snow White was being woven until the story? It didn't feel real. And the climax? Also felt unbelievable and didn't fit. The writing itself was dull. It was meant to sound poetic, but mostly it was just droning. It didn't sparkle with vivacity. This story - despite being slow - somehow crammed too much into one story. There was so much unexplained and unexplored. It could have been 3 stories. There was a lot more that could have been explored. I did finish it; I just wanted to find out where this strange story was going. But overall, disappointing.”

About Kell Woods

Kell Woods is an Australian historical fantasy author. She lives near the sea with her husband, two sons, and the most beautiful black cat in the realm.

Kell studied English literature, creative writing, and librarianship, so she could always be surrounded by stories. She has worked in libraries for the past twelve years, all the while writing about made-up (and not so made-up) places, people and things you might remember from the fairy tales you read as a child. After the Forest is her first novel.

Other books by Kell Woods

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