By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. 
 From beauty no road leads to reality. 
 ~Hannah Arendt 
 I waited for over a year to read Into the Forest. In that frame of time, I had imagined this idea in my head of a book filled with controversy and chaos. The reality of what this book was never crossed paths with what I had imagined. It was far better. 
 This story takes place in a post-apocalyptic time but it is not a post-apocalyptic book. This story features an act of incest (very brief - blink and you'll miss it) but it is not a book featuring an incestuous relationship. For everything that I thought Into the Forest would be, I realized that I was wrong. Very rarely am I glad to be wrong. 
 If the last book I'd read was bright lights and noise, then this book would surely be dark and quiet. Make no mistake though. Quiet can be beautiful. 
 The beauty was in the details. Heavy world building was not needed, for our characters lived in a world of solitude, away from the rest of a population in ruin. Survival and perseverance were the core values at the center of this world. If reading about day-to-day existence would not interest you, then this might not be a book you'd appreciate, which is fine. For me, I devoured this story in almost one sitting. As a child, I loved the Little House books. My favorites being Little House in the Big Woods and The Long Winter, the common thread between those two stories being the elements of day-to-day survival and finding the means to care for oneself with limited resources. I also had fascination with Claire's use of plants for medicinal purposes in the book Outlander, which is also a part of what happens in this particular tale. 
 For the two sisters of Into the Forest, the journey was rough. They leaned on one another to make it through. As of now, their future is wide open. I did not mind the open ending but I'm not sure if I would have made the same decision that they did. I guess it's good that I'm not trying to survive out in a world where every man fends for themselves. 
 This book was beautifully written in the form of one long and personal reflection. There are no chapter breaks but I didn't seem to mind that. The first few sections did have a bit more "retelling" than I cared to know about but the last half of the book was enthralling. Even though I know that this type of story won't be for everyone, I'm so glad that I took the time. It was worth the wait.