After the Forest

This wonderful, well-woven story is so rich and affecting you can't help but savour every single sentence. With characters that leap off the page, worldbuilding that immerses you completely, and a perfectly paced plot, Woods's clever retelling of the popular Hansel and Gretel fairy tale succeeds in giving us something novel and authentic.
- T.L. Huchu, bestselling author of The Library of the Dead

Kell Woods' debut takes familiar stories and tropes from the vast corpus of the Brothers Grimm and smartly weaves them into an excellent historical fantasy novel. After the Forest is poetic, evocative, and most of all, addictive. . . . After the Forest is high up on my list of best books of 2023. An author to watch and a powerhouse debut.
- Grimdark Magazine

A dark and wondrous tale. Utterly enchanting.
- Kate Forsyth, bestselling author of The Crimson Thread

With one foot in history, the other in folklore, After the Forest is a love song to fairy tales. Replete with secrets, magic, witches and wolves, bears and whispering books, Greta's world is one where enchantment can become a curse on the turn of a tongue. At once sweet as gingerbread and bitterly dark as heart's blood, After the Forest is reminiscent of Juliet Marillier at her finest.
- Angela Slatter, award-winning author of The Path of Thorns

Evocative, vivid and enchanting: Historical fantasy at its best.
- Belinda Alexandra, bestselling author of The French Agent

After the Forest is as deliciously irresistible as the gingerbread Greta bakes in the book. A touch of magic, a dash of mystery, a sprinkle of love and lashings of elegant writing make for a gorgeous debut novel that you'll want to consume in one gulp. Kell Woods shows that she's a born storyteller with a wonderful imagination and I, for one, am now a huge fan.
-Natasha Lester, New York Time bestselling author of The Three Lives of Alix St Pierre

This is utterly captivating novel blends folklore and European history with themes of family discord, trauma and self-discovery... Dark as molasses and dripping with witchcraft, love and magic gingerbread, After the Forest is the fairytale retelling of the year.
- Lauren Chater, bestselling author of The Winter Dress

Kell Woods has a historian's eye for detail, a born storyteller's understanding of tropes, and a poet's gift for description. Woods' debut offers readers a fresh take on fairytale reimaginings, exploring women's agency through a convergence of myth, magic and history. A sophisticated and intricately plotted debut with a compelling heroine.
- Jo Riccioni, award-winning author of The Branded and The Rising

[An] elegant debut. . . . Offer this lyrical, character-rich fantasy to fans of Mary McMyne's The Book of Gothel (2022) and Genevieve Gornichec's The Weaver and the Witch Queen (2023) Booklist, STARRED review