Mehrab is set in her ways as a witch in the woods comfortable living alone and keeping her companions to a minimum. Even after she almost dies in a magical trap in the woods, stubborn Mehrab hopes it was a one-off occasion and that she can go back to the comfort of her solitude. When a fellow witch brings a young woman named Rhea to hide with Mehrab, she’s forced to confront her solitary nature and share space with a young witch still learning to control her own power. Rhea can control fire, but she struggles to control her own emotions. After a small child named Ari goes missing in the dark woods surrounding Mehrab’s home, the elder witch is tasked by Ari’s parents to scry and try to find the missing girl. All Mehrab can see is darkness surrounding the child. As more children go missing, Mehrab has to encounter past mistakes and the emotional protections she’s created in order to stop an ancient evil as well as confront the dangers of a far more human cruelty.
If you prefer your heroines of the older and wiser variety, A Forest, Darkly is truly a gem of a novel. The book has a complicated story, focusing in the beginning on the arrival of Rhea and the girl’s adjustment to life doing manual labor, before it quickly diverges into multiple plots that all merge in one startling and beautiful ending. There are trees turned into men, forest creatures delighting in freedom, and the cruelty of human religion. There are figures not unlike the Wild Hunt of mythology and the terrible sting of past loves. Nothing in A Forest, Darkly is as simple as it seems. People do bad things but aren’t always bad people. Creatures that should seem frightening are protective. Love is rarely simple and straightforward. A.G. Slattery’s writing is poetic without beating the reader over the head with it, and Mehrab’s observations truly feel like an older woman reflecting on the fractured and complicated nature of human interaction, despite her magic gifts.
A Forest, Darkly is available February 10, 2026 from Titan Books.
