Tangle Wood by Jessica Palmer

Tangle Wood is a stunning new colouring book, released for sale just 10 days ago by Search Press Ltd. It is in the same vain as Animal Kingdom and Enchanted Forest, with intricate, woodland-centeric illustrations. The book features a vast range of heavily patterned forest creatures such as rabbits, fairies, foxes, gingerbread houses, hedgehogs, owls, ornate Romany wagons and loads of birds. The mythical and mysterious animals seem to hold the secrets of the forest, which is a very bizarre thing to say about a colouring book but the illustrations are THAT good... flicking through the pages feels like discovering a magic world. 

It really is like stumbling into the woods and getting lost in the tangle of vines, flowers and leaves within, the foliage getting thicker and darker as you press on, hundreds of tiny eyes watching your every move... okay, I've made it sound like a horror story when in fact it's just a beautifully illustrated colouring book! Pictures always work better than words- so trip over your feet into the hedgerow and discover the mysterious world of Tangle Wood!

Charming isn't it? I love these kinds of books, the ones that create worlds you can get lost in as you colour. The book has 75 illustrations and is similar in size and shape to Animal Kingdom, but whilst the paper is very good quality and most pens don't bleed through, the pages are off-white in colour. Some of the drawings also have a grey haze to them, which gives a slightly 3D look in places- to my eyes, anyway. When I opened the book the very first page was so misted with this effect that I thought it had one of those translucent papery covers over it like you get in wedding albums to protect the photo. This fuzziness quite hard to describe and I don't dislike it, but it's something I've not seen in a colouring book before. It is subtle enough throughout the book that you might not notice it really, but I thought it should be mentioned.

Tangle Wood has also followed the slowly growing trend of colouring books having a 'hide and seek' search element in them, this one with jeweled charms to find (pendants, brooches, rings, bracelets, etc- all insect oriented). It also has a lovely 'Belongs To' page, which I think should be included in every colouring book! (I love writing my name in things!)

I can see this book racing up the bestsellers in Adult Colouring, and it's well deserved. There's only a handful of books that have this kind of quality and captivating charm, and this is in that category. I finished my picture with Polychromos pencils and some pastel.

I was given this book in exchange for an honest review. You can find it on Amazon, here:

Tangle Wood: A Captivating Colouring Book with Hidden Jewels