The Forest Grimm

Gr 8 Up–Clara’s grandmother has only ever pulled two cards from her fortune-telling deck when scrying for Clara’s future—the Midnight Forest and the Fanged Creature. At nine years old, Clara is already destined to make a forbidden choice ending in her untimely death (“Tell me again, Grandmère, the story of how I die.”). That choice comes seven years later when Clara decides to enter the Forest Grimm in the hopes of finding her mother and reversing the curse on her village. With help from her mother’s red cloak, Clara sneaks into the forest with Axel, her childhood friend, to find Sortes Fortunae, the Book of Fortunes. The book was a gift from the Forest Grimm and protected Grimm’s Hollow from misfortune; it was hidden in the forest after a villager used it to commit murder, causing Grimm’s Hollow to become parched and impoverished. Plucky Clara must face the dangers of the forest and her imminent death in her hunt for the book in order to save her mother and her village.