From NetGalley
Yellowjackets meets Girl, Interrupted when a group of troubled teens in a wilderness therapy program find themselves stranded in a forest full of monsters eager to take their place.
Devin Green wakes in the middle of the night to find two men in her bedroom. No stranger to a fight, she calls to her foster parents for help, but it soon becomes clear this is a planned abduction—one everyone but Devin signed up for. She’s shoved in a van and driven deep into the Idaho woods, where she’s dropped off with a cohort of equally confused teens. Finally, two camp counselors inform them that they've all been enrolled in an experimental therapy program. If the campers can learn to change their self-destructive ways—and survive a fifty-days hike through the wilderness—they’ll come out the other side as better versions of themselves. Or so the counselors say.
Devin is immediately determined to escape. She’s also determined to ignore Sheridan, the cruel-mouthed, lavender-haired bully who mocks every group exercise. But there’s something strange about these woods—inhuman faces appearing between the trees, visions of people who shouldn't be there flashing in the leaves—and when the campers wake up to find both counselors missing, therapy becomes the least of their problems. Stranded and left to fend for themselves, the teens quickly realize they’ll have to trust each other if they want to survive. But what lies in the woods may not be as dangerous as what the campers are hiding from each other—and if the monsters have their way, no one will leave the woods alive.
Atmospheric and sharp, What the Woods Took is a poignant story of transformation that explores the price of becoming someone—or something—new.
Get in, losers (affectionately) we're going camping, with Courtney Gould's best book yet! I've had the privilege of reading all three of Gould's published works, and witnessing the evolution of her writing has been an honor. WHAT THE WOODS TOOK bodes especially well for the future of her writing career. I don't have a better comparison than, Yellowjackets meets Girl, Interrupted, but I will say that it reminds me of more recent horror movie Watchers (I haven't read the book the film was adapted from). If you enjoy any kind of isolated, survivor horror, like The Descent and The Ritual, keep reading for my glowing review of this book!
We're thrown into unsettling territory from the very beginning by foster kid Devin's point-of-view, waking in a dark and slightly unfamiliar bedroom with dark figures looming over her formerly sleeping form. She's immediately on edge and on ready to fight her way out, the way she's had to all her life, but little does she know this has all been arranged. Her foster parents have decided to send her away, in attempt to get her "help" in ways they aren't equipped to give her themselves.
Feeling angry, abandoned, and unwanted, Devin is constantly looking for an escape route that never comes, even when she finally arrives at her destination, the REVIVE teen rehab program, in the middle of nowhere. She's stuck with four other troubled teens, Olly--who she traveled with from Oregon, Hannah, Aidan, and the bane of her wilderness experience, Sheridan. The challenges that are presented to them have nothing to do with the dark things that live in the shadows of the trees the deeper they hike into the woods. Their heightened emotions only continue to blaze on their trail, and adds heated distrust and confusion to the truly terrifying situation they end up in.
Gould does an fantastic job laying the emotional groundwork for each character. Their struggles, their traumas and pains, seep into the horrors of this book seamlessly. When their pasts begin to haunt them it feels just as jarring for the reader as it does for the characters. The growth in each of them by the end of the book feels earned and honest, the way it should.
But, the horrors do persist. After weeks of distrust and fighting that literally comes to blows the teens are forced to work together once the counselors inexplicably disappear overnight. What happens from then on is an anxiety-inducing journey, full of lessons. Devin and the others learn that not everything is always as it seems--including each other--and must fight to make it out of the woods alive.
Reading along as they change in the midst of danger, with breakneck pacing, kept me eagerly turning the page. Gould managed to balance edge-of-your-seat thrills with gut-wrenching revelations in a way that will surely carry on for every book after this. What The Woods Took was an addictive read.
And I haven't even talked about the romance. Because I don't want to spoil anything. What I can say is, Gould's signature vulnerable queer romance treatment is ever present in this book. Complete with wonderful trope moments such as "only one tent" and "knife-to-throat", that so many of us love to see.
If none of this has convinced you to pick up/order a copy of this book, I don't know what will. There's so much to love about What The Woods Took, but at the end of it all, this is a story about facing your trauma and not letting it control who you are despite of it. It's about loving yourself, trusting yourself and others, and understanding that your pain doesn't define you. And I think that's a great take-away, for all readers everywhere.
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