Recently, I’ve been missing doing book recommendations and review posts, so I wanted to bring them back in a completely self-indulgent way: recommending books that inspired my own book, Paper Forests. This is a list of books that I joke about being the unofficial Paper Forests reading list, featuring dark fairytale retellings, bisexuals who can’t make good decisions, horror influences, whimsical forests that may or may not be sentient, and magic and monsters. Paper Forests is a loose ‘Hansel and Gretel’ retelling about teenagers trapped in a sentient forest afterlife, and I hope these books truly capture that spirit.
Let’s begin!
The Wicker King by K Ancrum
When August learns that his best friend, Jack, shows signs of degenerative hallucinatory disorder, he is determined to help Jack cope. Jack’s vivid and long-term visions take the form of an elaborate fantasy world layered over our own – a world ruled by the Wicker King. As Jack leads them on a quest to fulfil a dark prophecy in this alternate world, even August begins to question what is real or not. August and Jack struggle to keep afloat as they teeter between fantasy and their own emotions. In the end, each must choose his own truth.
This book so deeply means a lot to me. I think the thing that stands out most to me is: how you can do your best and still fail, but it’s not your fault. It’s really brutal and sad and yet beautiful. It’s about mental illness and codependency and unhealthy relationships and neglect and kids just trying to cope the best they can. It is a flawed story about flawed boys. But can we rewind to the part where I just said: they are trying to cope and hold the world on their shoulders the best they can. And they absolutely mess up. But they try. I also think this is the kind of book that is more than the words on a page. There are lots of suppressed feelings and emotions and underlying psychological reasons and causes. So go in expecting kids to mess up because they do.
My heart still sort of beats messily all over the place for this book and these boys and their illnesses and their story, which is part magic and part poison.
Among the Beasts and Briars by Ashley Poston
Cerys is safe in the kingdom of Aloriya. Here there are no droughts, disease, or famine, and peace is everlasting. It has been this way for hundreds of years, since the first king bargained with the Lady who ruled the forest that borders the kingdom. But as Aloriya prospered, the woods grew dark, cursed, and forbidden. Cerys knows this all too well: when she was young, she barely escaped as the woods killed her friends and her mother. Now Cerys carries a small bit of the curse-the magic-in her blood, a reminder of the day she lost everything. As a gardener’s daughter, the most danger she faces now is the annoying fox who stalks the royal gardens and won’t leave her alone.
As a new queen is crowned, however, things long hidden in the woods descend on the kingdom itself. Cerys is forced on the run, her only companions the small fox from the garden, a strange and powerful bear, and the magic in her veins. It’s up to her to find the legendary Lady of the Wilds and beg for a way to save her home. But the road is darker and more dangerous than she knows, and as secrets from the past are uncovered amid the teeth and roots of the forest, it’s going to take everything she has just to survive.
This book was wonderful in a very quiet, classic way, yet the worldbuilding was still breathtaking and vivid and whimsical. It opens in a simple and quaint part of the kingdom with Cerys, the gardener’s teenage daughter who has magic literally in her blood that marks her survival from the curse in the woods. She’s best friends with the royal heir and a mischievous and melodramatic fox who quickly became my favourite character.
A majority of this book takes place on a journey through the forest. Forest settings are the love of my life, especially as someone who basically grew up in the trees. The descriptions really emphasise the creepiness and I love the attention to detail on those affected by the curse, as well as all the other monsters hidden in the shadows. Some of the plot at this point is predictable, but it follows the traditional fairytale way of storytelling. It definitely made up for lacked elements in other areas, especially in the slow-burn romance. The bickering and banter brought the characters and their chemistry to life and I was entertained, even if I knew how it was going to end.
The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones
Seventeen-year-old Ryn only cares about two things: her family, and her family’s graveyard. And right now, both are in dire straits. Since the death of their parents, Ryn and her siblings have been scraping together a meagre existence as gravediggers in the remote village of Colbren, which sits at the foot of a harsh and deadly mountain range that was once home to the fae. The problem with being a gravedigger in Colbren, though, is that the dead don’t always stay dead. The risen corpses are known as “bone houses,” and legend says that they’re the result of a decades-old curse. When Ellis, an apprentice mapmaker with a mysterious past, arrives in town, the bone houses attack with new ferocity. What is it that draws them near? And more importantly, how can they be stopped for good?
This is another book that I’ve fallen completely in love with due to it hitting so many of my niche interests. A tough gravedigger girl, a soft mapmaker boy who can never find his way, and their undead goat adventure through mountains and folklore to face the curse of risen corpses and long-hidden truths about themselves. It’s a story about folktales and magic and family and undead corpses.
I didn’t expect to love a story that is about (in summary) zombies so much. The author did such a wonderful job of showing them through the perspective of myths and legends, and also removed a lot of the horror element, creating something that felt like it could’ve held a role in a fairytale rather than a nightmare. And it’s exciting to see how well urban tales and folklore mix with the horror genre.
One small thing about this book that meant a lot to me is that Ellis has chronic pain in his shoulder, and it doesn’t disappear by the end of the book as some injuries tend to do in fantasy. The author talks about the toll it has on his body throughout the journey and, as someone with chronic pain, it’s wonderful to see a character who lives with it and can still have adventures.
House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland
Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats. Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind. As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children. The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.
There were so many things that I loved about this book. Sutherland’s writing is beautiful, something which I had doubts about before I started reading as I had a mixed experience with some of her previous works. It has an incredibly fairytale-esque rhythm that makes the story alluring and atmospheric and exquisite and eerie. There are some beautiful descriptions of character appearances, the clothes that Grey designs, and the environments that they explore. I was drawn in from the first page. I think the thing that I love the most about the writing is that it doesn’t shy away from showing the ugly side and the rotting interior beneath all of the beauty.
Grey is a fascinating character. She describes herself as the ‘thing in the dark’ and is the sister who has used her newfound powers for her benefit. She’s beautiful and dangerous and uses the mystery of the sisters’ past to create a mystery for her public persona. In another universe, she would fit in perfectly as a villain.
House of Hollow is a captivating read that had me hanging onto every single word, somehow combining a missing-person story and subversive fairytales and horror elements that kept me up at night.
And those are the four books that most influenced the writing process for Paper Forests, all part magic and part monstrous. Please let me know in the comments below if you’ve read any of these books, and if you also have recommendations that are in the same queer spooky forest realm.
TandeWrites 