What She Found in the Woods ARC Review

What She Found in the Woods

Author: Josephine Angelini
Publisher: Macmillan
Pages: 367
Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥

Synopsis from goodreads:

“Running from a scandal at her New York private school, Magdalena heads to her family home to recover under the radar.

Over-medicated and under-confident, she’s fearful she’ll never escape her past.

Until she meets Bo out hiking. Wild, gorgeous and free, he makes her believe she might finally be able to move on.

But when a mutilated body is discovered in the woods, Magdalena realises she can’t trust anyone.

Not even herself.”

♥

I won an ARC copy of this book at YALC this year and the premise sounded so interesting! I love to read a thriller every now and then but it isn’t a genre I like to read too much of. With the month of Halloween, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to read What She Found in the Woods to feel sufficiently creeped out.

Starting off with Magdalena moving in with her grandparents, it’s clear she has a past which involved her doing something unforgivable, and she’s moved to get away from it all but it’s obvious from the start that it still haunts her. Magda takes off to the woods for a hike one day and here she meets a strange fellow, and one she can’t seem to stop thinking about. But with people going missing and a body turning up in the woods, perhaps it isn’t the safest place for Magda to dwell.

What struck me about this book is that it starts off really quite slow and it takes ages for things to happen. Magda moves in with her grandparents and meets up with some friends from her childhood, and there are a few little hints dropped that things aren’t quite right as we learn someone has gone missing.

Magda goes out on a hike and meets someone in the woods and is instantly enamoured. But then a body is found and shivers run down your spine as suddenly the story is taking a dark turn.

But for the majority of the middle portion of the book, not a lot happened at all and I felt like I was waiting for something to happen. It’s a very slow build and it’s like you get flickers of tension like when the body is found, or Magda’s journal is mentioned – her journal is a massive subject of this story.

What I really did enjoy are the flashbacks to Magda’s past and we learn what she did and how she ended up moving in with her grandparents and allllll about that journal of hers. These were the more shocking bits, especially when Magda is in hospital and we discover the extent of the weapon that is her journal.

This book is a bit of a murder mystery but also a delve into the human mind and what it’s capable of.

When we reach the last quarter of the book, this is where things really start to happen and it’s like the story is ramped up a gear and the story throws everything it has at you. Suddenly, everything happens at once and you don’t really get chance to take a breath before the next thing happens. After all of that build-up, it ends in an unexpected and dramatic conclusion making it a worthy thriller.

Not quite what I expected, this story requires a bit of dedication to get through, but the ending is worth it for the answers!

Due out 25th July 2020, keep this on your radar for a creepy read for next Halloween!

 

 

ARC review: The Loop

The Loop

Author: Ben Oliver
Publisher: Chicken House
Pages: 363
Rating: ♥ ♥ ♥
Expected date of publication: 5 May 2020

Synopsis from goodreads:

“Luka Kane will die in the Loop, a prison under the control of artificial intelligence.

Delays to his execution are granted if Luka submits to medical experiments. Escape is made impossible by a detonator sewn into his heart.

But on Luka’s seventeenth birthday, life in the Loop is altered: the government-issued rain stops falling and rumours of unrest start to spread. Breaking out might be his only chance to survive… and to stop a catastrophe from deleting humankind.”

♥

I managed to win an ARC copy of this book at YALC this year and I was immediately taken in by the quote that was included on the front cover of my copy: “This will pierce a hole through the right atrium of your heart… It will track your movements. It will connect you to the loop, and, most importantly, it will detonate and will kill you if you step out of line.”

What a quote to entice a reader! I liked the sound of the book and I was in the mood for a bit of a thriller read so I picked it up and I’m so glad I did.

Initially, the scene is set and you come to understand life in the Loop where things are constant and expected and very, very monotonous and mundane. Luka Kane is a great main character and I liked his personality with his don’t look back and just keep moving attitude to everything that happens to him. Even though he is segregated from his fellow prison mates, he still manages to make friends and meets up with them thanks to his friendly Warden.

So we learn about the Loop and I especially appreciated the one sentence chapters in quick succession to reiterate that Luka Kane does the same thing every day, just like his prison mates. I started to wonder where the story would go and as soon as I thought that, something happens.

The pace changes, the tension creeps in, and suddenly this isn’t about life in the Loop anymore. Luka Kane has to battle through darkness of more than one kind, and he soon discovers that if he wants to survive, he will have to make brutal decisions.

I couldn’t believe how tense I felt reading this book when things take a different turn – it really felt like watching a scary movie but you don’t know what’s coming or what’s going to happen. I thoroughly enjoyed the thrill of reading The Loop and being surprised and shocked when certain things happen, but when it came to the reveal at the end with regards to why anything in the book happened, I have to say it fell a little flat for me. I had a certain expectation or hope for which direction the story would go, and I just felt disappointed with where it went. But I think that is purely personal preference and what I prefer to read over what someone else might absolutely love. That being said, I still liked this book regardless of my feelings over the ending and I’m still keen to see where the story goes.

The Loop is the first in a futuristic trilogy written by Ben Oliver. With The Maze Runner vibes, it’s the next dystopian thriller to have on your list to read.