Reviews with content warning for Vomit - What Lies in the Woods

OMG this BOOK! I am obsessed.

Naomi, Liv and Cass have been friends since they were five and Cass decided they would all be friends. The summer when they were all eleven everything changed with Naomi near fatally stabbed and her and her friends putting away the serial killer that did it. The story jumps forward to Naomi, now 33, still dealing with her trauma and returning to her home town and her friends. We unpeel the layers slowly and go back in time to relive that summer and experience what really happened through Naomi's eyes. Small town drama, PTSD, and lies stacking on lies shape the tale we experience.

Without spoilers this was the most twists in a book I have experienced in a while. I thought I knew what was happening and then I thought I was wrong and then I thought I was right again and then it turned out I was half right. I hit a point where I would have died or killed for Naomi. The story was constantly moving to the next plot point but still giving us a full feel of the characters involved. It was a perfect balance that I really enjoyed.

Trauma and PTSD were handled really well and with care. I appreciated how themes were discussed in a way that wasn't self-indulgent or just straight up trauma porn, actually Marshall seemed to call out authors who are solely focused on that through the use of Naomi's boyfriend in the beginning. We get this sentence, among others about him, that allowed me to instantly know who he was.

The trouble was he’d mistaken drama for virtue and suffering for art, and felt impoverished by his own good fortune.

He, Mitch, spends his spare time writing stories using Naomi's trauma as the center of the story. He is convinced she needs to use her trauma to sell her art instead of photographing weddings and this results in some pretty heated arguments. She says he was an asshole, she knew he was an asshole and so did he. But she was only comfortable dating assholes, someone she could never attach to - been there girl. But when she goes home to gather her things in the middle of the book there is a scene that reveals his true nature, and some of hers.

What the hell just happened? I should have just fucked him so he could feel like he was helping.

When she doesn't allow him to sleep with her, he kind of loses it and kicks her out. After he promised her he wouldn't try anything. So, he's also that kind of asshole. One of the best parts, for me, was her overcoming these choices. She never shies away from it being why she does it:

Every man I’d slept with had been a mistake of one kind or another. The mistake was the point. You couldn’t let someone in without it breaking you, but you could choose the way you broke.

But she seems finally ready to move on from that. It just kind of made the story for me. We got so much of the character development inside this twisted story where you never know who is good and who is bad and the main character herself is morally gray and unreliable.

Hard recommend, but check the content warnings first.

Some more thoughts on little girls being absolutely feral forest goblins: https://youtu.be/AMY_324xjfQ?si=d5ABP_BHxWypgJOs

Content Warnings

robin_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated

5.0

Whoever recommended this on BookTok: Thank You! I needed a good murder mystery thriller with secrets and characters that weren’t bland and gaslit themselves into the most ridiculous situations.
Could the character have been a bit smarter about somethings? Sure. But then the story wouldn’t have been this amazing.
It’s the first time in a long while that I couldn’t predict the outcome of a mystery book. I’m here for it.

Content Warnings

kris386's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

3.0

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bookishcookiemonster's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

2.5

It was ok - the mystery is compelling, gripping in some parts, but the pay off was disappointing for me.

Content Warnings

edgaranjapoe's review against another edition

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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? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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kristinlynn24's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

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daniallreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.5

WHAT A BOOK! DANG!

*bows down to Kate Alice Marshall*

Welcome to the world of adult thrillers, you nailed your debut! My mind is a puddle thinking about how phenomenal this story is.

Is 2023 going to slap me in the face with marvelous thrillers? *fingers crossed* Because I am charting a path to believing in this genre again.

Thank you to authors like Kate Alice Marshall who can come up with stories that keep you on edge, shock you and something you won't want to put down.

I would have given this book a five BUT I didn't for two reasons. One, there is a gargantuan amount of characters, details and crucial moments to the plot introduced right from the beginning. I think a lot of readers are going to have an issue with this. SO, TO YOU READING THIS REVIEW and are very interested in this book BE PATIENT with it, you don't want to quit her. I was intimidated with everything that was being thrown my way.

One of my updates on Goodreads literally said "I am only one hundred pages in and so much is happening!"

Don't get me wrong, I loved that it was chaotic. This is what kept me going. I was curious about every single characters storyline. I needed to know more. I didn't want to stop.

What to compare this to? Think "Pretty Little Liars" but twist in wickedly dark details and add a creepy small town in a woodsy setting to the mix plus suck up some of the juvenile tween drama garbage. Boom, "What Lies in the Woods."

"Nothing good comes from old trouble" is a quote one of the characters says in the story and I think its a very great representation of it as a whole. It focuses on the present but the horrors of three little girls past comes to haunt them when they thought they finally could achieve some closure from one fateful afternoon where one of them was close to death.

I am telling you, you will never guess what Kate Alice Marshall has in store for you. I was shocked by (almost) everything that was revealed. [One thing was a little predictable BUT my brain waves were influenced by a book I literally read right before so I think a lot of people will be surprised at THIS SPECIFIC reveal]

Thank you Macmillan Audio for the advanced listener copy of "What Lies in the Woods," I highly recommend the audio. The narrator does a wonderful job depicting Naomi and the distress that she constantly felt throughout the entirety of the story.

Kate Alice Marshall's debut adult thriller comes out January 17th! Great debut. If you're a thriller fan, check out this dark and gruesome story!

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