I feel like I had the right expectations about what the author was going for, and the audio gave everything more depth and made me feel closer to the story, and I liked it. I still feel like my complaints are valid, but I didn’t really notice them this time. He brought more life to the characters and the story and captured its ethereal, fairytale feel. He gave each character a voice that suited them perfectly and made it easy to tell them apart. His way of speaking sounded natural and engaging. I’m adding an update because I listened to the audiobook, and it actually made the book more enjoyable for me! I think hearing the story aloud helped because of how fairytale-like it is and because the narrator, Matthew Lloyd Davies, did a wonderful job. This review was written after my 1st read.* Others may enjoy it more though, especially those who enjoy fairy tales, soft and somewhat open-ended romance, and woodsy magic. This story had a good idea, but ultimately the execution just wasn’t right for me.

There was a dryad in the book too, and I think she was my favorite character. I also enjoyed learning the story behind the woods and Tobias and some of the supernatural stuff as it was given to the reader bit by bit. Tobias had an interesting connection to the woods. I liked the myth/folklore/fantasy element though. It was almost like a fairy tale though, now that I think about it, and maybe that was the point. The main character (Tobias) didn’t have much personality, the two characters hardly interacted much on-page, a lot of things weren’t explained, I was just kinda told that some things happened, and then the book was over.

It’s not that novellas can’t be good, just that maybe this particular idea needed a longer book. I think this was just too short for anything to be very developed or for me to feel any connection to or between the characters. I liked certain elements of this novella, but others just didn’t work for me. *I received an ecopy of this book via NetGalley.

Greenhollow duology