Review of The Lying Woods

Somehow I went into The Lying Woods expecting a ghost story or at least some nail-biting tension. I didn’t get that, but did I like what I did get? Find out in my review of The Lying Woods below!

The Lying Woods by Ashley Elston

To be published on November 13 by Disney- Hyperion

Thanks to the publisher for sending me an ARC for possible review!

Synopsis from Goodreads: Owen Foster is stunned when his mother tells him his privileged life was funded by stolen money.

After using the family business, the single largest employer in his small Louisiana town, to embezzle millions and drain the employees’ retirement accounts, Owen’s father vanished without a trace, leaving Owen and his mother to deal with the fallout.

Owen returns to Lake Cane to finish his senior year, where people he can barely remember despise him for his father’s crimes. It’s bad enough dealing with muttered insults and glares, but when Owen and his mother receive increasingly frightening threats from someone out for revenge, he knows he must get to the bottom of what really happened. 

Owen’s only refuge is the sprawling, isolated pecan orchard he works at after school, owned by a man named Gus who has his own secrets–and in some ways seems to know Owen better than he knows himself. As Owen uncovers a terrible injustice that looms over the same Preacher Woods he’s claimed as his own, he must face a shocking truth about his own past–and write a better future.

My review of the Lying Woods:

Okay, so first off, despite the title and tagline, this is NOT a paranormal/ghost story/spooky story.

But it’s a good story. It’s a “character who returns to a small town and unravels family secrets” story. Which is a kind of story that I really like, but it just took me a bit to shift my expectations.

So Owen’s dad defrauds most residents of Lake Cane, the small town where he and Owen’s mom met and then vanishes, leaving Owen and his mom broke and confused. He has to drop out of boarding school, return to Lake Cane, and face the scorn hatred of seemingly everyone in town.

The Lying Woods has a mystery in the present: where is Owen’s dad and is he guilty? Owen wants to think that he’s not. But there’s also a mystery (and a narrative) in the past, a story of another boy arriving in Lake Cane in 1999.

I wasn’t sure about that aspect of the story at first and it took me some time to warm up to the second narrative. If you’re not a regular reader of mysteries you may need to have some patience, because the entire story takes some time to set up, and the pay-off doesn’t really happen until the very end.

For me, being patient was worth it. The characters are interesting and well-written, and the mysteries (which eventually are connected) were well-crafted. Owen shows a lot of growth. At the outset, he’s kind of a typical teenager – resentful about what is happening to him and telling everyone who will listen that he’s a victim too. But then he sees the impact his father’s actions had on the town. He grows a lot over the course of the story, which was great. The small-town atmosphere was good, too.

If you like mysteries, definitely check this one out. And I will be checking out other books by this author!

Have you read another Ashley Elston book? Feeling up for a mystery? Tell me in comments!