C.G. Drews crafts atmospheres the way other authors construct sentences—with deliberate, suffocating precision. Following the success of Don’t Let the Forest In, Drews returns with Hazelthorn, a novel that doesn’t simply blur the line between botanical beauty and body horror but obliterates it entirely, leaving readers to wander through the wreckage of what remains. This is gothic fiction stripped to its rawest nerve endings, a story that asks what happens when the monsters we fear most are the ones we’ve been taught to call family.
Evander has spent seven years locked in his room at the sprawling Hazelthorn estate, his isolation punctuated only by medication that keeps him docile and memories he can’t quite grasp. His guardian, the austere Byron Lennox-Hall, has given him three rules: never leave the estate, never enter the gardens, and never be left alone with Byron’s grandson, Laurie—the boy who tried to kill him when they were children. When Byron dies suddenly, Evander inherits everything: the crumbling mansion, the overgrown gardens, and a family legacy drenched in blood and secrets. But inheritance comes with questions, and as Evander begins investigating his guardian’s death, the garden beyond his window starts refusing to stay contained, creeping into the house with vines that whisper and thorns that hunger.
The Architecture of Entrapment
What makes Hazelthorn genuinely unsettling isn’t its violence—though Drews doesn’t shy from visceral imagery—but rather the claustrophobic realization that every form of safety Evander has known is actually a cage. The prose itself becomes complicit in this imprisonment, with sentences that loop back on themselves, thoughts that spiral into obsession, and descriptions that feel simultaneously lush and strangling. Drews writes isolation with an intimacy that suggests firsthand knowledge of what it means to be told your pain exists for your own good.
The Hazelthorn estate functions as both setting and character, its walled gardens and locked doors creating a labyrinth that mirrors Evander’s fractured understanding of his own history. The mansion is described with that peculiar mix of decay and grandeur that defines the best gothic fiction—velvet cushions “dulled to a decayed black,” wallpaper featuring “dead-eyed fauns,” and blood stains that have become part of the carpet’s pattern. This isn’t mere set dressing; it’s a physical manifestation of how trauma becomes architecture, how the places that promise protection can become the very structures that harm us.
Drews excels at creating spaces that feel simultaneously vast and suffocating. The north wing where Evander lives feels like a wing folded in on itself, separate from the rest of the house, forgotten but somehow still watched. When he finally ventures into the gardens, the walled sections create a honeycomb effect—each area isolated yet somehow connected, much like the compartmentalized memories Evander struggles to access.
Botanical Nightmares and Living Grief
The garden itself deserves analysis as more than setting or threat—it’s the book’s dark heart, pulsing with an intelligence that feels both ancient and deeply wounded. Drews takes the familiar gothic trope of nature gone wild and transforms it into something far more complex: a ecosystem of rage and hunger that has been shaped by decades of abuse, blood sacrifice, and exploitation. The plants aren’t simply dangerous; they’re responsive, almost sentient, reaching for Evander with what feels disturbingly like recognition.
The body horror elements emerge gradually, starting with small disturbing details—thorns growing from gums, vines threading through wounds—before escalating into something far more visceral. Drews understands that the most effective horror lies not in shock value but in the slow realization of transformation, the moment when you recognize that the boundaries of your body are no longer fixed. When Evander begins to suspect he might not be entirely human, that he might be something grown rather than born, the horror isn’t in what he is but in what was done to make him that way.
The field guide that Evander discovers becomes a crucial narrative device, filled with Byron’s clinical observations about poisonous plants and their effects. These botanical descriptions serve dual purposes: they’re genuinely informative about the garden’s deadly flora while also revealing Byron’s methodical cruelty. The notes in the margins blur the line between scientific observation and abuse documentation, making readers complicit in decoding which “experiments” refer to plants and which to people.
The Toxicity of Family Legacy
At its core, Hazelthorn is a meditation on inheritance—not just of wealth or property, but of trauma, abuse, and the stories we tell ourselves about family. The Lennox-Hall family is presented with biting clarity as a dynasty built on exploitation, each generation feeding the next into the garden’s hungry soil. Drews doesn’t simply condemn them; she anatomizes how privilege and cruelty compound across generations, how abuse becomes tradition becomes legacy.
Byron Lennox-Hall exists as a specter throughout Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews, his control extending beyond death through the systems he established. He’s depicted as a man who treated both plants and people as experiments, subjects to be observed, disciplined, and ultimately consumed. The revelation of what he did to Evander—the medication that wasn’t medicine, the “episodes” that were induced rather than treated, the gaslighting that masqueraded as care—unfolds with devastating precision. Drews never lets readers forget that the most effective monsters are the ones who convince their victims that confinement is protection.
The extended Lennox-Hall family provides a rogues’ gallery of dysfunction, each member emblematic of how generational wealth and secrets corrupt. Oleander’s desperate hunger for the garden’s power, Bane’s casual cruelty, Azalea’s calculated manipulation—they’re all products of a family that values acquisition over humanity. What makes them effective as characters is that Drews never reduces them to simple villains. Their motivations are understandable even when their actions are monstrous, creating a moral ambiguity that feels uncomfortably real.
Evander and Laurie: A Romance Grown Through With Thorns
The relationship between Evander and Laurie forms the novel’s emotional core, and it’s here that Drews demonstrates her considerable skill at writing complex, messy intimacy. This isn’t a clean romance of mutual pining; it’s something far more tangled, built on shared trauma, betrayal, obsession, and a desperate need for connection that neither boy quite knows how to articulate.
Evander emerges as a protagonist defined by absence—absent memories, absent autonomy, absent even a clear sense of self. His voice in the narrative reflects this fragmentation, thoughts that circle and contradict, moments where he loses time or agency. Drews writes his autism and abuse history with nuance, showing how Byron weaponized Evander’s differences, turning neurodivergence into illness and isolation into treatment. The medication that kept him docile, the locked door presented as safety, the constant message that his emotions were symptoms rather than valid responses—it’s a portrait of medical abuse that feels painfully authentic.
Laurie, by contrast, is all sharp edges and defensive sarcasm, a boy who has learned to armor himself in apathy and mockery. The slow revelation of what Byron did to him—the “discipline,” the physical abuse, the systematic breaking down of any rebellion—explains why he presents as careless and underachieving. It’s armor, carefully constructed to avoid giving Byron anything genuine to target. His feelings for Evander have been buried under years of being told they were dangerous, wrong, something to be punished.
The chemistry between them crackles with the kind of intensity that comes from two people who have been orbiting each other’s trauma for years. Their interactions move between tenderness and cruelty, often in the same breath, because neither knows how to want something without fearing it will be taken away. The kiss scene—violent and desperate and wrong in all the ways that feel inevitable—captures perfectly how trauma distorts desire, how the need for connection can manifest as consumption.
Where the Thorns Catch
Despite its considerable strengths, Hazelthorn isn’t without its imperfections, particularly in its pacing and the resolution of certain plot threads. The middle section, where Evander investigates Byron’s murder while the family descends on the estate, occasionally loses momentum as it cycles through similar confrontations and discoveries. The various Lennox-Hall relatives, while individually interesting, sometimes blur together in their collective awfulness, making some scenes feel repetitive.
The mystery element, while compelling, telegraphs certain reveals a bit too obviously. Attentive readers will likely deduce both the garden’s true nature and several major plot twists well before Evander does, which can create a sense of waiting for the protagonist to catch up rather than discovering alongside him. Benedict Dawes as an antagonist feels somewhat underdeveloped, his motivations clear but his characterization thin compared to the more complex family members.
Some readers may also find the ending’s ambiguity frustrating. Drews chooses not to provide clean resolution to several threads, instead leaving Evander in a liminal space of transformation and uncertainty. While thematically appropriate—recovery from trauma isn’t neat, and self-acceptance is ongoing—it may leave those seeking catharsis feeling somewhat adrift. The final confrontation, while visceral and emotionally resonant, raises as many questions as it answers about what Evander is and what he’ll become.
The greatest weakness of Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews, ironically, stems from one of its strengths: the oppressive atmosphere occasionally becomes exhausting. The relentless darkness, the constant revelations of new horrors, the way every relationship is poisoned by secrets—it’s effective but sometimes overwhelming. Readers seeking moments of genuine lightness or hope will find them few and far between. This is intentional, but it also means the book requires a particular mood and emotional resilience to fully appreciate.
The Garden’s Hunger: Themes That Take Root
Autonomy and medical abuse thread throughout the narrative, examining how institutions and authority figures can weaponize care. Evander’s medication, presented as necessary for his safety, was actually sedation to keep him compliant. His “illness” was manufactured to justify his imprisonment. Drews doesn’t simply condemn this abuse; she explores how it shapes identity, how being told you’re sick enough times makes you question every aspect of yourself.
Neurodivergence and otherness are handled with particular sensitivity. Evander’s autism is never presented as something to be fixed or overcome, but rather as part of who he is—something Byron attempted to suppress and pathologize. The revelation that Evander might not be entirely human adds another layer to this exploration of difference, asking what it means to be called monstrous simply for existing outside expected parameters.
Rage as a valid response to injustice pulses through every page. Both Evander and Laurie are boys who have been told their anger is wrong, excessive, something to be medicated or beaten out of them. The garden itself becomes a metaphor for suppressed fury—what happens when rage has nowhere to go but down, rooting deep, growing wild and consuming everything. Drews validates the anger of marginalized people while also examining when righteous fury becomes destructive.
The Verdict: Beautiful, Brutal, and Deeply Unsettling
Hazelthorn succeeds brilliantly at what it sets out to do: create an atmosphere of creeping dread that builds to devastating revelation, examine how trauma and abuse function systemically, and tell a love story between two profoundly damaged boys who are trying to find themselves while literally transforming. It’s not an easy read—the content warnings at the book’s opening should be taken seriously—but it’s a rewarding one for readers willing to descend into its thorny depths.
Drews demonstrates remarkable skill in sustaining tone across the novel’s length, maintaining that gothic sensibility of decay and dread while also finding moments of dark beauty in the horror. The prose alternates between lyrical and visceral, sometimes within the same sentence, creating a reading experience that feels both literary and compulsively readable. This is genre fiction that refuses to be easily categorized, drawing equally from horror, gothic romance, and dark fantasy while transcending the limitations of any single category.
Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews earns its place alongside recent standouts in dark YA like Hell Followed With Us and The Coldest Touch, works that refuse to soften difficult truths for younger readers. It’s a worthy successor to classics like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, sharing that novel’s interest in isolation, family secrets, and the ways women and gender-nonconforming people are othered and contained. The botanical horror elements also recall the sense of creeping dread in Annihilation, that feeling of nature operating by rules we can’t comprehend.
For Readers Who Crave Darkness
If you loved these books, let Hazelthorn sink its thorns into you:
- Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White – Another exploration of body horror, religious trauma, and queer rage that refuses easy answers
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson – For the gothic atmosphere, isolated estate, and unreliable narrator hiding terrible secrets
- The Coldest Touch by Isabel Sterling – Gothic romance with supernatural elements and characters grappling with what it means to be monstrous
- Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer – For readers drawn to the alien, inexplicable nature of the garden and ecological horror
- Bunny by Mona Awad – If you appreciate dark academic settings, body horror, and relationships that blur obsession and desire
- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Gothic mansion, family secrets, and something wrong with the house that gets into your blood
- The Honeys by Ryan La Sala – Queer horror set in an isolated location where something is very wrong beneath the surface
Final Thoughts: Let It Under Your Skin
Hazelthorn is the rare book that gets under your skin and stays there, thorns and all. It’s not perfect—the pacing stumbles, some threads fray—but its imperfections feel appropriate for a book about messy, incomplete healing. This is a novel about boys who have been called broken learning that maybe they were only ever bent, shaped by forces beyond their control into forms that don’t fit the molds prepared for them.
Drews writes with the confidence of an author who knows exactly what story she’s telling and isn’t concerned with making it palatable. The result is a book that challenges, disturbs, and ultimately rewards readers willing to sit with discomfort. It asks hard questions about complicity, inheritance, and what we owe to the people who hurt us. The answers it provides are neither simple nor particularly comforting, which makes them feel true.
For readers drawn to gothic horror that prioritizes atmosphere over jump scares, that treats its queer characters with complexity rather than tokenism, and that isn’t afraid to examine how systems of power function to break people down, Hazelthorn is essential reading. Just be prepared: once you enter its gardens, you may find it difficult to leave. And part of you might not want to.
The thorns grow back, after all. They always do.
- Content Warnings: Child abuse, medical abuse, body horror, gore, violence, ableism, eating disorder elements, gaslighting, death of a parent (backstory)
- Recommended for: Readers 16+ who appreciate dark gothic fiction, botanical horror, complex queer relationships, and narratives that don’t flinch from difficult subjects
- Reading Experience: Best consumed slowly, with breaks between sessions to process the emotional weight. Not recommended for readers in fragile mental health spaces or those triggered by themes of control and autonomy.