Oh I'll probably never be able to express my adoration and utter love for this piece of fiction in mere words when all I could do after turning the last page was whimper and press this book to my chest because my heart felt like it might crawl out of my ribcage. Where do I even start? This is the story of Andrew and Thomas, two boys with raging imagination. Andrew writes dark little stories, "cruel fairytales", as he calls them, "meant to hurt, like a paper cut - a tiny sting that means nothing more than 'I'm alive I'm alive I'm alive'". And Thomas, ever charcoal-stained Thomas with the sharp tongue and his wild love for the forest, draws the monsters that Andrew writes about. Slender creatures with withering vines and thorns where a face should be, as terrifying as they are beautiful. This is their thing - sharing their art. But then the monsters they so carelessly bring to paper come to life in the forest near their boarding school. Night after night, the boys have to fight their own most horrid creations, their walking nightmares. But this is also just the story of Andrew, an anxious boy with such a strange delicate world in his head but so little that tethers him to the real world. His twin sister Dove and Thomas might be his only anchors to reality at all, and Andrew despises how his feelings for Thomas - his room mate at Wickwood Academy and closest companion since they were twelve - are anything but purely platonic. Now, they need each other like air, losing more and more blood each night, and eventually their sanity, too. It's a wild thing, the love between these two boys, and it grows rampant over their shared nights out in the forest. How could it not? And oh the language in this book! At some point you get used to how intricately beautiful the author writes, but still every sentence leaves you baffled by its choice and sequencing of words, unusual, poetic, but not in a try-hard, "marker me with a sharpie" way. Just raw and delicate like exposed flesh, CG Drews makes the words dance with each other. Might as well marker the whole darn book, to be honest. The story telling is insanely well done. I won't spoiler the huge plot twist (that you won't see coming, even if you think you do - I promise, the last 40 pages will leave you BREATHLESS and teary-eyed), but know that this story is so well crafted and masterfully perfected down to every beat - the dialogues feel real and banter-y, the gory horror on one side and Andrew's and Thomas's intensifying relationship on the other are weaved together flawlessly and make the tension rise and fall like it's a living, breathing thing. And the pacing is so airtight, it doesn't allow you to put the book down even to grab a drink. And it all builds up to the most unsettling, gutwrenching, beautiful, emotionally PACKED ending this story could've possibly gotten. I was not disappointed, but I also wasn't satiated - I was haunted. No other way to end this than call "Don't Let The Forest In" an absolute masterpiece. Truly a work of art. (And it's illustrated, by the way! Here and there lurk some stunningly eery creatures between the pages, by the incredibly talented Jana Heidersdorf. What a plus!) If you like floral metaphors, beautifully atmospheric body-horror and creative, obsessive gays, read this book. Or actually, just read this book, full stop. You'll like these things after finishing it, I promise. Read. This. Book.