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31k reviews for:

The God of the Woods

Liz Moore

4.15 AVERAGE

kaylee_misch's profile picture

kaylee_misch's review

4.5
challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

โ€œ๐‘ท๐’‚๐’๐’Š๐’„,โ€ ๐’”๐’‚๐’Š๐’… ๐‘ป.๐‘ฑ. ๐‘บ๐’‰๐’† ๐’†๐’™๐’‘๐’๐’‚๐’Š๐’๐’†๐’…. ๐‘ฐ๐’• ๐’„๐’‚๐’Ž๐’† ๐’‡๐’“๐’๐’Ž ๐’•๐’‰๐’† ๐‘ฎ๐’“๐’†๐’†๐’Œ ๐’ˆ๐’๐’… ๐‘ท๐’‚๐’: ๐’•๐’‰๐’† ๐’ˆ๐’๐’… ๐’๐’‡ ๐’•๐’‰๐’† ๐’˜๐’๐’๐’…๐’”. ๐‘ฏ๐’† ๐’๐’Š๐’Œ๐’†๐’… ๐’•๐’ ๐’•๐’“๐’Š๐’„๐’Œ ๐’‘๐’†๐’๐’‘๐’๐’†, ๐’•๐’ ๐’„๐’๐’๐’‡๐’–๐’”๐’† ๐’‚๐’๐’… ๐’…๐’Š๐’”๐’๐’“๐’Š๐’†๐’๐’• ๐’•๐’‰๐’†๐’Ž ๐’–๐’๐’•๐’Š๐’ ๐’•๐’‰๐’†๐’š ๐’๐’๐’”๐’• ๐’•๐’‰๐’†๐’Š๐’“ ๐’ƒ๐’†๐’‚๐’“๐’Š๐’๐’ˆ๐’”, ๐’‚๐’๐’… ๐’•๐’‰๐’†๐’Š๐’“ ๐’Ž๐’Š๐’๐’…๐’”.

Finally crossed The God Of The Woods and am relieved to say I felt it lived up to the hype around it. Iโ€™d give it probably a 4.5 stars if Iโ€™m being picky, but will round up to 5.

This book is masterfully written. Moore paints such deeply real portraits of life for these characters. You are completely transported to the Adirondack estate, and you feel the grief, the anger, the suspicion of everyone. You relive what it was like to be a teenager, trying to figure yourself and your friends and your family out. Your heart breaks, your mind races, you want out of the woods.

The story of the Van Laars - their history, their home, their hardships, their heaviness - is told in such beautiful detail through the eyes of those who have all carried parts of its burden, for better or worse. Through their experiences, we learn just how far people are willing to go to maintain appearances, wealth, and classist divides. And we question: is there really such a thing as self-reliance, and how different is it from self-interest?

This novel will give you so much to think about, so many decisions to analyze, so many gray areas to consider how youโ€™d handle if you were in them. Itโ€™s a mystery in story and a true work of literature in craft. I think this one is going to stick with me for a while.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

chiara_casiglia's review

4.0
mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
medialua's profile picture

medialua's review

4.5
emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

dgwest15's review

4.75
challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Not my usual genre so not totally 5 stars cause it was also sad af, but loved some of the female characters and the multiple povs I read this book quick trying to figure out what happened. 

rdurnil's review

4.0
adventurous mysterious

busylizziereads's review

4.25
adventurous mysterious medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book gets off to a slow start but worth sticking with it - you canโ€™t put it down once you get to a point
strangeclippings's profile picture

strangeclippings's review

5.0

Moore might actually be one of my favorite writers. She somehow manages to be a successful and accomplished author without falling into the trap of being a) a Colleen Hoover/Frieda McFaddenesque bestseller factory with exciting plots but sort of blah prose or b) a Serious Literary Author who writes like a bot that digested every Iowa Writerโ€™s Workshop MFA application from the last 18 years and regurgitated an angsty and over-serious (god, what do I have against serious these days? Itโ€™s quickly becoming my least favorite traitโ€ฆ) epic spanning three generations, two NY boroughs, and countless edgy sexual encounters involving things like vodka, juul, and microaggression (full disclosure, I donโ€™t personally know what any of those things are; Iโ€™m a SAHM from Missouri).

Anyways, Moore is smart and good at writing but also an adherent to the philosophy that books should have, like, plot. This book is thick but easy to get throughโ€”a page turner, if you will. Itโ€™s an upstairs/downstairs mystery set in the Adirondacks, with a young investigator trying to unpack it all so she can get to the bottom of not one but two murders (orโ€ฆ???) that happened in the same terrible aristocratic family, 14 years apart.

uhhlanna's review

5.0
dark mysterious fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes