Reviews with content warning for Violence - In a Dark, Dark Wood

Honestly absolutely nothing was shocking and it was painfully obvious. With that being said I did enjoy this and like the atmosphere. It was interesting to see the relationship dynamics. I loved Nina she was honestly my favorite part of this book. It’s your newer to thrillers I would recommend this, but if your not and are looking for a big plot twist and not just a good time I wouldn’t recommend this.

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yeehawmcgee's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

A sharp, witty book full of punchy, unique dialogue that breathes life into a range of characters. Some of them you will love to hate, others you will hate to love. All of the characters are believable and their behavior makes sense for the story. Many thrillers fall into the trap of having characters act in illogical ways for the sake of protecting the plot twist, but Ruth Ware keeps her story watertight.
Ware rewards readers for paying attention to even the smallest pieces of dialogue when executing the twist, this is, however, a double-edged sword. If you have been paying close attention, the twist can be underwhelming. Should you not be paying enough attention, the twist may seem rather random.

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mandi_buelow's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No

3.5

The story did keep me guessing and wondering what was going to happen. It kept me engaged enough that I wanted to finish and find out what happened.
The only reason I’m rating it lower is because the characters are in their late twenties but throughout the book, they were very immature in their words and actions towards one another. It was just very high schoolish to me in some points and the way they acted at the “hen”.
I can appreciate (since I’m 32) going out for a girl’s weekend and letting lose but some of the things they did just seemed juvenile especially Nora when she wouldn’t say no to doing something she didn’t want to do. I just feel at that age and having some life experience by that point that you should have enough self confidence to say no to things you aren’t comfortable doing.

Overall it was okay. I’m not mad I read it and I did find the story entertaining.

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growintogardens's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

I've read 2 other books by the author and loved them, but this one wasn't her best. I didn't like any characters, and Nora was not the smartest cookie. It was pretty easy to figure out the who/why of the mystery early on.

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belladonnashrike's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

okay this book was so damn good. I don’t know why it took me so long to pick it back up again, but i read a majority of it in one sitting - I couldn’t put it down!

reminded me a lot of of gillian flynn’s work.

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mkzach's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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spooderman's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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toofondofbooks_'s review

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This book is about a bachelorette party gone wrong: murder, mayhem, and spooky shit ensues. I have quite a few complaints about this one but as per usual, I want to start with positives because I like to be generous and also because I did like this book, there were just things I wanted from it that I didn't get. I thought the writing was lovely. Ruth Ware is very obviously great at building suspense, setting the scene for horror, and writing tense scenes between characters. Some of my favorite scenes were scenes where characters were fighting or bitching about one another. I lived for the drama of it all.

My main complaint is this: Reese Witherspoon says on the cover blurb that I'm going to be "really scared." I was not. This book undoubtedly had its moments where I was very invested in figuring out what happened, but there were such long stretches of pages where I felt that things were getting repetitive and if something didn't happen soon, this was going to go into the DNF graveyard. However, a lot of times, the moment I had that thought, something would happen; it just was never scary enough to make me feel anything. I also felt like after a certain point, it was really easy for me to put 2 and 2 together and figure out what the big twist was, which made the whole climax kind of a slog for me.

All in all, I do give this 3 stars because I think it was beautifully written, but perhaps not a favorite story for me specifically.

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