From the New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Deep comes a haunting romance set deep in the magical snow-covered forest, where the appearance of a mysterious boy unearths secrets that awakens the enchanted, but angry, woods.
Be careful of the dark, dark wood . . .
Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.
Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.
But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.

After experiencing the illuminative fairytale that was Ernshaw’s Wicked Deep, and being positively surprised by the eeriness of the atmosphere and winsome romance in the book, I expected a similar impression to be made from November’s release Winterwood. This book, although with a similar concept and the idea just didn’t sit right with me - realizing that I was encompassed by a sense of not quite disappointment, more of a dull indifference, which was a shame considering I see this as a really good book.

Ernshaw contemplates her work in a mixture of fantasy, mystery, and romance. The fantastical elements are usually tied to the old fairytales and give out a folklore note of supernatural tales coming to life. Fir Haven is a small town, known best for two things: it’s haunted woods and the Camp for Wayward Boys. The Wicker Woods are older than people, surrounded by a considerable number of haunted stories, from which most of them are true. The forest itself is alive, and the best to know that are the Walker women or, as they are known in town, the witches. Nora Walker isn’t a real witch, for the gift was weakened in her line of ancestry. She can do a limited amount of potions and some useful tricks, but she can understand the forest. She can walk the forest without being harmed and know how to come alive of it when the danger comes. So, that is how she eventually stumbles upon a boy who was lost in the woods two weeks ago during the snowstorm, not knowing the whole town would be just better if she left him in the snow.


Ernshaw’s writing is exceedingly enjoyable, especially the way she slowly builds the tension, making her work more than a fantastical fairytale, but also a suspenseful set of events with thrilling and unexpected plot twists. It starts off as just some high-school romance, making it seem obvious how the story would end, but oh how the tides have turned in the way I didn’t see coming from far far away.

Still, no matter how much I enjoyed the plot and worldbuilding that this book has successfully intertwined, what is a good book without good characters? That’s the question I often ask myself – because I could love the book solely because of its characters, forgetting everything else about it - of course, if they’re interesting and well-developed, not reading something from the perspective of someone as dull as Nora Walker. I felt like both her and Oliver were excruciatingly unimaginative and boring, their thoughts and action repetitive and somewhat annoying. I couldn’t find a single aspect of their personalities to care about, especially their relationship because I’ve certainly seen praying mantises having more chemistry than them.