Book Review - What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

Title: What Lies in the Woods
Author: Kate Alice Marshall
Genre: Mystery/ Thriller
Published: 2023
 
Description: Naomi Shaw used to believe in magic. Twenty-two years ago, she and her two best friends, Casiddy and Olivia, spent the summer roaming the woods, imagining a world of ceremony and wonder. They called it the Goddess Game. The summer ended suddenly when Naomi was attacked. Miraculously, she survived her seventeen stab wounds and lived to identify the man who had hurt her. The girls’ testimony put away a serial killer, wanted for murdering six women. They were heroes.
 
For decades afterwards, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods – no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.
 
Review: “What Lies in the Woods” is  slow-burn mystery that is hard to put down. Before this, I only read one other book by Kate Alice Marshall, which was “Rules for Vanishing”, a young adult. “What Lies in the Woods” is an adult thriller.
 
Naomi survived a brutal attack when she was only eleven years old. She and her two best friends Olivia and Cassidy where exploring the woods when it happened. Cassidy and Olivia manages to identify the attacker as Alan Michael Stahl and he went to prison for it. Now, over twenty years later, Stahl has died in prison and it bring the three friends back together. But back in the woods, so many years ago, the girls discovered something that they have kept a secret. And now Naomi is doubting her memories from the attack.
 
Marshall shows us that, as time goes by, you can convince yourself that certain memories are true, even when they aren’t. Naomi starts doubting her own memory and doesn’t know whether Stahl was the man that Olivia and saw that night.
 
The characters in the book are interesting and have depth, although you never really get to like or love any of them. They are all very flawed, but also damaged and dealing with their trauma each in a different way.
 
The story had some predictable moments, and some obvious red herrings, but the twist in the end was really good.
 
Rating: 4/ 5