I like a grim(m) fairy-tale retelling as much as the next person, and a dark, modern re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland sounds fab, does it not? And yes, for the first third of The Hazel Wood, I was excited. Engrossed, even. The premise is mysterious and enticing: Alice, our teenage protagonist, has been moving from place to place her entire life, her mum her only constant. She’s never really known why her mum keeps packing them off different places, but best she can tell it’s to escape the vicious “bad luck” they can’t help but encounter. “But I still saw the shadow of the bad luck: a woman who trailed me through a used bookstore, whispered something obscene in my ear as she picked my phone from my pocket. Streetlights winking out over my head, one by one, as I walked down the street after midnight. The same busker showing up with his guitar on every train I rode for a week, singing “Go Ask Alice” in his spooky tenor.” There’s something creepy about the …