Kelly McFarland
Hazel and Holly is the tale of sisters—Hazel and Holly—as they live in their high fantasy/enchanted forest setting.
The sisters are witches, their mother is dead but her soul lives on in a painful geas that their necromancer father forced, and the sisters don’t like each other much and are very different.
The plot reads as if it’s a story that has everything a reader could wish for.
“Nestled within an enchanted forest is the Grove, a community where witches and warlocks practice elemental magic, brew mystical potions, and lock their cellars against beer thieving gnomes. Life is quiet and uneventful. Well, except when Hazel’s long-lost father uses necromancy to trap her dead mother’s soul.
That simply won’t do. Necromancy is forbidden in the Grove, and for good reason too. Nobody wants filthy corpses shambling around, mussing up one’s garden. Hazel is determined to find her father and undo his treachery.
But despite Hazel’s plans of becoming a one-woman army, she can’t do everything alone. It’s not until wild sister Holly convinces her to leave the house for once and go to a party that Hazel finds a pair of unlikely allies in two bickering warlock brothers.
Together, the four of them go on a journey that takes them out of the Grove and into a world where necromancy reigns and the dead won’t respectfully stay in the grave. Hazel will do whatever it takes to stop her father and save her mother’s soul. Even if it means turning to necromancy. Even if it means losing her friends. Because they would never help a necromancer. Would they?”
The first chapter is brilliant. It lives up to the hype, drawing you in to the story, introducing you to the characters. As the story progresses it becomes bogged down by it’s dialogue, a lot which feels unnecessary and takes the readers attention away from what is really interesting plot.
Sara has created a fantastically vivid world within Hazel and Holly, one a reader would love to explore more of especially the four elemental types of magic – Wyr, Weaving, Hearth, and Wild. There’s a fifth practice, dark one that combines all other and is called necromancy. At around 500 pages the book is quite long and while it’s an enjoyable read, we do wish that the focus was more on world which Hazel and Holly live in, as the author has created something intriguing there.
This book is fantastic if you love dialogue driven stories. If your a fan of fantasy and supernatural novels like The Firelighter series then you should give this a go!
Have you read Hazel and Holly? Let us know at @Fuzzable!
