Don't Let the Forest In

Andrew Perrault, a shy, anxious high school senior who writes dark fairy tales, returns to Wickwood Academy, an elite boarding school in rural Virginia, for his final year. Before summer break, he slipped a veiled love confession in story form into the pocket of Thomas Rye, his best friend and the boy he secretly loves. Andrew's twin sister, Dove, rides with him in tense silence; she and their father are locked in a cold war Andrew cannot decipher.

Andrew is desperate to see Thomas, who has been unreachable all summer after Thomas's father smashed his phone against his head. When they reunite, Thomas embraces him but seems jittery, and Andrew notices a stain on his sleeve that looks like scrubbed blood. That same day, police officers approach Thomas to question him about his parents' disappearance. Andrew eavesdrops and learns the Rye house was trashed, a large volume of blood was found, and Thomas is lying about when he left home.

A flashback reveals how the three became inseparable at age 12. Andrew and Dove arrived at Wickwood midyear from Australia, painfully out of place. During a class hike, a bully named Bryce Kane repeatedly tripped Andrew, and Thomas, a wild, forest-loving boy, struck Bryce with a stick to defend him. The protectiveness forged their bond: Thomas the guardian, Dove the organizer, Andrew the storyteller.

In the present, Dove avoids Andrew and Thomas while rumors spread that Thomas murdered his parents. In their annual notebook exchange, Thomas's summer sketchbook reveals macabre drawings inspired by Andrew's stories. When Andrew pushes for answers, Thomas deflects, trading confessions: Andrew fears everything except the dark, and Thomas fears Andrew will one day find only rot inside him. When Andrew tries to reassure Thomas about being a person of interest, saying he would stand by him regardless, Thomas interprets this as Andrew calling him a murderer and cuts Andrew out for two weeks. Andrew notices both Thomas and Dove sneaking into the forest at night and assumes they are meeting romantically.

During this period, supernatural events escalate. Fungi multiply in Andrew's pockets, and a creature with cloven hooves stalks him in the school bathrooms. Andrew and Thomas reconcile when Andrew speaks his feelings aloud in their room, not realizing Thomas is listening. That night, Andrew sneaks into the forest, where a skeletal, vine-covered monster attacks him. Thomas appears and kills it with a garden spike, then reveals that monsters matching his drawings have been emerging from the forest nightly. One attacked his parents' house before the school year; their bodies may be in an old well. Thomas has been fighting the creatures alone to keep them from reaching the school.

Andrew insists on helping. They destroy Thomas's sketchbook, bury the torn pages at the Wildwood tree, a beloved ancient white oak, and Thomas stops drawing entirely. They purchase a hatchet and begin entering the forest together each night. Thistle fairies, tiny blood-drinking creatures from Andrew's stories that Thomas once sketched, attack them one night. Thomas rips open his own wounds to lure the fairies away while Andrew destroys the remaining pages. The fairies die, but Thomas is left covered in bites.

The monsters escalate further. A creature called the Antler King pursues them inside the school. When Professor Clemens, a cruel calculus teacher, catches Andrew in the hallway, vines explode from the walls and the Antler King kills Clemens. During the attack, a vine burrows into Andrew's ear. Thomas destroys the Antler King, and they hide the evidence. Andrew later discovers the vine has taken root inside his body, finding mud, sap, and a seed when he lances a swelling behind his ear.

A breakthrough arrives when Andrew writes a fairy tale on a birch tree with a Sharpie, narrating a monster's death. The story comes true. Andrew can kill monsters with his writing, just as Thomas's drawings bring them to life. When he destroys skeletal creatures called bone shrikes the same way, they whisper a demand before dying: The forest wants a heart cut out and buried in the woods. Andrew keeps this from Thomas.

As they grow closer, sharing a bed most nights, Thomas confesses he has loved Andrew since they were 12. Andrew reveals he is asexual and does not experience sexual attraction. Earlier, he confided this to Lana Lang, Dove's sharp-tongued roommate, and Chloe Nguyen, a shy junior, while repairing vandalized Pride flags; both accepted him. But Thomas stumbles over his response, and Andrew interprets the hesitation as proof Thomas will eventually need what Andrew cannot give. The conversation dissolves into mutual cruelty, and Andrew runs.

Events converge. Bryce reports Andrew's trespassing, and the principal effectively expels him. Andrew discovers vines growing throughout his body, his stomach distended with their outlines visible beneath his skin. On Halloween night, a shadow monster called a dream ravager attacks during dinner, putting the entire room to sleep. Andrew alone stays conscious. He writes a story narrating the creature's destruction, then stabs it with a butter knife to fulfill the story's logic. The ravager disintegrates. Afterward, Andrew collapses into Thomas and blurts that he wants him. Thomas promises he wants Andrew always.

That night, Andrew sneaks into the art classroom and finds it overgrown with a literal indoor forest. He discovers Bryce hanging dead from the trees, vines growing from his hollowed eyes, and realizes the forest fulfilled his own earlier threat against Bryce. Andrew flees into the forest, calling for Dove. She appears and tells him he is hallucinating: Thomas was arrested, the monsters are not real, and his friendships are fabrications. Thomas crashes through the trees and reaches Andrew. Desperate, Andrew begs Thomas to prove he is real. Thomas kisses him. When Andrew mentions Dove, Thomas tells him the figure was not Dove, "because Dove is dead" (297).

A flashback reveals that near the end of junior year, Dove forbade Thomas from asking Andrew out, wanting their trio unchanged. They argued, and Dove went into the forest alone. She climbed the Wildwood tree, a branch broke, and she struck her head and died. Andrew blamed Thomas, telling him it was "all your fault" (310), then smashed his hand through a mirror. Unable to accept her death, Andrew has been hallucinating Dove's presence throughout senior year.

Andrew confronts the full truth: He, not Thomas, is the source of the monsters. His stories have been manifesting as reality, fueled by unprocessed grief. The forest has grown inside him because he has been feeding it. At the Wildwood tree, the forest reveals itself as a massive tree-monster. Andrew writes a final story on his own body in blood: A prince cuts out his heart, gives it to the "October boy" (his name for Thomas), and buries it in the woods. He kneels with a box cutter pressed to his chest. Thomas, having torn free from restraining vines, tackles him. Thomas insists Dove's death was an accident and asks, "Does it have to be your heart?" (323).

Andrew does not cut out Thomas's heart. Instead, he buries his notebook of fairy tales, "his heart made paper" (326), beside the tree. The forest falls still. At dawn, Andrew sits among the oak's roots, his body ravaged by roses, vines, and bloody writing. Thomas's head rests in Andrew's lap. Andrew whispers that all his stories have always been about Thomas and asks if they are real. Thomas tells Andrew to kiss him, and then he will find out. The novel ends without confirming whether either boy survives.