What Lies in the woods

By Kate Alice Marshall

This begs the question of whether or not complete trust could ever exist between anyone.

The Ugly Truth:

Some books leave me feeling happy and others that leave me feeling cared for; all this left me was a feeling of emptiness. What started so strong had me feeling like a shell of myself at the end, complete with a grim look towards the future and towards the people in my life (even though I know – or at least think I know – none of them are serial killers).

Kate Alice Marshall’s What Lies in the Woods is a classic murder mystery thriller that had me questioning every character’s motive from the very first page. The book is from the point-of-view of the former victim (or I guess once a victim, always a victim) of a notorious serial killer, Naomi Shaw. She has returned home to her small Washington town to visit with her two best friends following the death of the man they all managed to send to jail at just 11 years old. However, you are quickly immersed into the summer of terror that the girls experienced and, with Naomi, start to discover that the missing memories of the past might be needed to save the future.

Despite only have Naomi’s perspective, I felt attached to the side characters quickly and was able to see through some cracks pretty early on. While I do not want to spoil much, I think, for the avid reader and fan of mysteries, you can kind of guess who will be a problem based on who seems to be the best liar. It honestly kind of frustrated me how naïve Naomi was to some of the big red flags. Like, girly, you had HORRIBLE things happen to you SO MANY times, how do you not have just like a semblance of a bad feeling happening in your gut???

On top of that, I felt there were some moments when the story was a little unbelievable. For example, and again not trying to spoil much, but how do you keep missing what someone looks like when they attack you? I can only guess it is super scary and concerning but like…?? PAY ATTENTION?

Finally, I guess I wanted a bit more female rage at the end. To put all of these pieces together and see what was supposed to be right there all along would send me into an angry spiral like no other. I recognize that sometimes it pays to be smarter than crazier, but holy hell, I wanted a couple of punches thrown and a good scream to be had. I feel like there was still so much inside that needed release and it made me feel like our final characters standing did not have that peace that they were searching for all along??