Review of What Lies in the Woods

I thought this one was pretty good, but it was really giving me the feeling that I’d read it before. Check out my Review of What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

Written and edited by Jen Ryland. Last updated on:

What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

Published on January 17, 2023 by Flatiron Books. I checked this book out of my local library.

Naomi Shaw used to believe in magic. Twenty-two years ago, she and her two best friends, Cassidy and Olivia, spent the summer roaming the woods, imagining a world of ceremony and wonder. They called it the Goddess Game.

The summer ended suddenly when Naomi was attacked. Miraculously, she survived her seventeen stab wounds and lived to identify the man who had hurt her. The girls’ testimony put away a serial killer, wanted for murdering six women. They were heroes.

And they were liars.

For decades, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods—no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.

What Else Has Kate Alice Marshall Written?

She wrote a series of YA books: I Am Still Alive in 2018, Rules for Vanishing in 2019, Our Last Echoes in 2021, and These Fleeting Shadows in 2022. Her latest is called No One Can Know (2024) and you can check out my review of No One Can Know here!

She also wrote a middle grade series called The Thirteens.

Jen’s Quick Take on What Lies in the Woods

• Feels a little bit YA, even though the characters are adults
• Has a podcast/true crime element
• Good writing and plenty of suspects
• Reminded me of other books I’ve liked, which isn’t a bad thing

Review of What Lies in the Woods

There was a lot to like about What Lies in the Woods. And yet, I also felt a sense of déjà-book. I just invented that, but it’s the feeling you get when you’re reading that you’ve read that book before. But you haven’t.

First, what I liked about What Lies in the Woods: I thought that Naomi was an interesting character. She’s been through a lot, and she’s pretty guarded as a result.

I liked the writing. There were plenty of suspects.

So let’s get back to the déjà-book.

Friends With a Secret is a common trope, but a good one.

It’s often found in Dark Academia books like The Secret History and I made a whole book list devoted to it here!

The Friends With a Secret trope can sometimes lean a little bit YA (young adult), and in this case I feel like it did. I didn’t really feel like this group of friends felt like they were in their thirties. I didn’t realize that Kate Alice Marshall (as described above) has written a bunch of YA, but that made sense to me.

Finally, there is the “Slenderman” element of this story.

YA books LOVE the “friends go into the woods and not all of them come out” trope. I’ll just mention a few: That Weekend by Kara Thomas, Tell Me What Really Happened by Chelsea Sadoti, and many of the books on my list of YA Books About Survival in the Wilderness.

In What Lies in the Woods, Naomi, Cassidy, and Olivia play “the Goddess Game,” and Naomi almost gets stabbed to death. Cassidy and Olivia swear that a man stabbed Naomi, but are they really telling the truth? I didn’t realize that going into the woods with friends was so dangerous, but Dr. Phil even did an episode on it. Yikes. Do not go into the woods with your friends!

What Lies in the Woods also used the Journalist Digging into an Old Case trope.

In What Lies in the Woods, a podcaster wants to re-visit a terrible trauma suffered by main character Naomi, who was stabbed and nearly died when she was eleven. As a fan of podcasts, I was initially excited about this trope when it surfaced hard in the 2020s, but I’m beginning to get a bit tired of it. I did a whole post on Thrillers and Mysteries With a Podcast Element, if you are interested.

In any case, this aspect of What Lies in the Woods REALLY reminded me of A Flicker in the Dark, which featured a journalist, not a podcaster, and a bit of The It Girl, which also (I think) had a journalist character.

So I did like What Lies in the Woods. Even though it reminded me a lot of other books I’ve read, I felt it was a good example of the tropes. Have you tried it? Will you try it? Tell me in the comments!