WHAT LIES IN THE WOODS by Kate Alice Marshall

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Published: January 17, 2023

Pages: 319

GOODREADS DESCRIPTION

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.

MY REVIEW

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

There is something actually lying in the woods, and it has been kept a secret by Olive, Cass, and Naomi since they were eleven years old. They came across a human skeleton hidden away in a grove, and they would visit the skeleton, giving it a name and performing ceremonies to pretend they were possessed of magical powers. These childhood days of make-believe are shattered when Naomi is brutally attacked and almost stabbed to death in the woods. She and her friends identify Alan Stahl, a wanted serial killer and their testimony sends him to prison for life. News of his death twenty-two years later brings the three friends back together in their hometown in Washington state.

Olivia, who has always been mentally unstable, has done her own research, trying to identify the skeleton in the woods. Stahl’s death has triggered Olivia’s mental instability and events start to unfold that question the validity of the girls’ testimony. Who was the skeleton and was it one of Stahl’s victims? If Stahl wasn’t Naomi’s attacker, then who was and are they still around?

I thought this mystery played out well and it held my interest with its twists and turns. I was able to figure out one of the several mysteries halfway through the book, but there were unexpected twists at the end that I did not see coming. It is a good mystery/thriller that plays out well.