Don't Let the Forest In by CG Drews
Published 2024 · 92,400 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Horror, LGBTQ+ Fiction, Young Adult
How hard is Don't Let the Forest In to read?
Don't Let the Forest In scores 37 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 35 out of 100
- Reviewers describe the prose as dramatic and flowery, so the diction is ornate and gothic but written for teen readers. It sits closer to Beach Read's contemporary clarity than to the formal registers of The Great Gatsby.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- The fairy-tale register and lyrical prose suggest flowing sentences, but a young adult horror novel keeps its grammar accessible. Expect clear, readable constructions with some stylised cadence, a notch above Beach Read.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- The premise is concrete: monsters, a forest, nightly fights. Underneath it sits an abstract idea about creation and obsession, which keeps the book above Beach Read but well below The Great Gatsby.
- Information density: 35 out of 100
- The plot is driven by a mystery of vanished parents, blood on a sleeve and monsters brought to life, with twists a reviewer says sent them back to reread chapter one. The pace is unhurried and the density is light, like The Housemaid's manageable reveals.
- Narrative indirection: 42 out of 100
- Twists that reward a reread suggest the narration withholds information from the reader. The story still states its events plainly, closer to The Housemaid's manageable reveals than to the unreliable narration of The Great Gatsby.
- Symbolic density: 50 out of 100
- The monsters are Thomas's drawings of Andrew's stories, so creation and obsession serve as the central metaphor. The dark fairy-tale frame adds motifs such as the forest, though the book is less dense than The Great Gatsby.
- Ironic distance: 22 out of 100
- Reviewers call the tone honest and dramatic, and the story is told with earnest teenage emotion. Irony stays minimal, as in It Ends with Us.
- Resolution withholding: 35 out of 100
- The blurb sets up a hard choice about destroying the monsters' creator, which signals a plot built toward resolution. Twists should pay off within the story, so the book resists closure less than The Great Gatsby does.
- Structural complexity: 35 out of 100
- Andrew's fairytales are embedded in a school-and-forest story, and the twists may recast earlier chapters. The structure is otherwise a linear young adult novel, close to Beach Read's simplicity.
How Don't Let the Forest In is regarded
Don't Let the Forest In holds a literary regard score of 24 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.
Where the story of Don't Let the Forest In takes place
- England, present day (boarding school) (2024), the main setting