**Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this opportunity.
What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould is a young adult horror novel. It is a dual-point-of-view novel about two young people who are sent by their parents/guardians to a wilderness therapy program for troubled teens and things go horribly wrong. It is set to be published on December 10th, 2024. I rated it 4 stars on Goodreads.
Here’s the summary from Goodreads:
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.
This was a really interesting novel. The subject of trouble teens wilderness therapy programs is one that I have heard a lot about recently, so it seems like the perfect setting for a horror novel. That entire concept is already pretty horrific, and Courtney Gould did a wonderful job of expanding on that and adding an additional layer of horror. She managed to craft an incredibly atmospheric novel and I found myself haunted by the reality that she constructed and also the elements of fiction that she wove in. In some ways, the realistic elements were scarier, but I still really enjoyed the horror novel that she wrote.
There are two main point of view characters, Devin and Ollie. They both had different voices, and brought interesting layers to the story. I enjoyed both of their perspective’s equally, and really felt for them as they were forced to face the various obstacles that they came across. They are very sympathetic characters who haven’t been dealt good hands. I liked seeing them interact with the other characters, and I liked seeing them grow as people.
The monsters in this novel (the mimics, not the adults who failed these teens) were really interesting to me. I found it interesting how they were shapeshifters and seemed to be able to read minds a bit. I was also intrigued by their need to consensually take a human’s form in order to leave their land. However, I wanted things to be a bit more resolved in areas related to them. I still had some questions that I wanted answered.
The romance elements that were developed through the story were really well done. There were definitely some toxic elements, but you also saw a lot of character growth before anything romantic actually happened. I just felt that the characters all had an interesting dynamic.
If you are intrigued by the premise, I would definitely suggest that you check out this book when it releases in December.
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