What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould

I received this book for free from NetGalley to facilitate my review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

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“A visceral, unflinching, and emotionally powerful horror novel...this is Gould at her most poignant and most electric.” –Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning

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.

“Unsettling, raw, and absolutely terrifying. Gould tears open the tender, angry heart of teenage friendship and what happens when our loved ones fail us.” -Trang Thanh Tran, New York Times bestselling author of She is a Haunting

Content Warning: What the Woods Took contains:

• substance abuse
• mentions of suicide
• death/harm of a child
• mentions of sexual assault/child sexual abuse
• gore/violence

I periodically receive emails from NetGalley telling me what books are “Read Now”. In the most recent email, What the Woods Took was listed among the books on offer. While I had previously seen Courtney Gould’s other books on NetGalley, I had not been lucky enough to be chosen to read them. But since this one was “Read Now” I managed to snag it. I’m so glad I was able to get it.

In this book we follow five teenagers who have been sent away to “wilderness therapy” by their parents/guardians. Our illustrious group consists of:

• Devin – nearly 18 years old, has been in foster care for most of her life, resorts to violence to solve her problems.
• Sheridan – a rich girl with a tragic past, she has a tendency to be quite the bitch to others
• Hannah – a girl you’d think would be the last person on earth to be sent to “wilderness therapy”
• Aidan – a younger teen who just wanted to be liked
• Ollie – a teen relatively close in age to Devin who did something bad, but not what his dad thought

As we follow these five teens on their wilderness therapy journey, we find that things in this wilderness aren’t exactly what they seem. One of the things I loved about this book is that the enemy isn’t what you’d expect – and in some cases might actually be someone you know!

I found the writing style in What the Woods Took to be extremely easy to follow and I was very impressed with it. Ms. Gould crafted this story with the utmost care and made it so easy to read that I finished in just a few hours. It also helped that I didn’t want to put the book down!

I gave this book a four star rating – I can’t wait to pick up Ms. Gould’s other novels from the library. She has gained a fan for life.