Hello Beautiful People! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall, a spine-tingling mystery thriller that follows a woman who can’t seem to get away from her past.
Main Characters:
- Naomi: As a child almost lost her life in a traumatic event while playing with friends, still running from the past in the present Naomi is forced to relook at everything she thought she knew after some shocking revelations come
- Olivia: Naomi’s childhood best friend who was there when the girls were attacked, is struggling with the past and when Alan Stahl dies in prison things that seemed like they were buried are brought up again.
- Cassidy: Comes from a high profile family, and like her two best friends was also in the woods that day, has always been seen as the glue of their friendship
- Alan Stahl: Was convicted for attempting to kill Naomi and her friends in the woods that day but even to the day of his passing always claimed innocence, was only convicted due to the witness testimony of the girls
- Ethan Schreiber: Comes to the town the girls grew up in to try and get interviews for his true crime podcast after the death of Stahl, strikes up a friendship with Naomi
My Review
What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall is a really enjoyable mystery full of twists and turns that kept me guessing the whole time. With a really dynamic mystery (that I was originally a bit skeptical about), interesting characters, and a plot that’s hard to tear away from this book is a really awesome weekend read. I enjoyed the fast pace of the book because it matched all the drama and everything going on in the book.
I rated What Lies in the Woods an 8.5/10 overall. The book revolves around the past trauma that deeply bonded three young friends, and how it reconnects them again in their adulthood. When Naomi, Cassidy, and Olivia were all preteens the girls enjoyed spending hours in the woods together, playing games, talking, and creating this fantasy world between each other. What they don’t expect though is that a grown man will come in to spoil the fun, and almost kill Naomi in the process. Now in her adulthood and left with a multitude of thick scars to remind her of the past Naomi has been trying to move away from what happened to them all those years ago. However, she is brought back into that world when she gets a call to attend an impromptu reunion following the death of the man convicted of attacking them, Alan Stahl. During this reunion, things all three of them never wanted to focus on again are brought to light and they are forced to look at if what they thought they knew was true all along.
I really enjoyed the unique aspect of the book in which all three of the victims of the main crime of the book survived it. Although I love a good classic final girl troupe I thought the idea of all the victims surviving something that they shouldn’t have to be a really interesting one. It helped tie in a topic that comes up in the book a lot which is mental health, and how that plays into how each of the women are today. Naomi, Cassidy, and Olivia are the classic opposite trio. Although it’s a bit cliche I enjoyed the stark differences between each of the woman and how that made their friendship that much more interesting. In my opinion, it just helped define what role each friend was there to play in the relationship. Naomi is the poor friend, a rebel, but also determined, and shows a lot of strength. Cassidy was the wealthy friend who would often lead the girls and was clearly confident and self-assured. Olivia is a shy, inquisitive follower. All three are opposites but seem to create this friendship where they all balance well off of one another, generally checking each other on things that they are stronger at than the others.
When Olivia reaches out to Naomi in a panic after Alan’s death it’s not what she expects at all, but Naomi finds that’s similar to Olivia things of the past have been eating at her. With Alan Stahl now dead Olivia thinks it’s time for them to share the real reason why they were out in the woods all the time, Persephone. Persephone is what the girls named the dead body they found in the woods. After finding this body Cassidy created this mystical world surrounded by Persephone and her ability to bring the girls good things. It’s all super weird, but they have always kept her a secret not wanting to tell police that they found/visited this body and never told anyone, and that’s what put them in this position. At the point of attacking the girls, Stahl was denounced as a serial killer. The girls were his final attempt. The police just think that he came across the girls and tried to do them in when they were playing together, what they don’t know is the girls were doing their own little ritual in the woods there. I was a little confused as to why his death would inspire them to talk about this now but it seemed like it may have been weighing on at least a few of the girl’s minds for a bit, so maybe this just brought back things for them that made them feel it was time. Little do they know though that digging up Persephone would dig up even more skeletons, that may also explain really just what happened in the woods those days.
I enjoyed the added character of Ethan to balance off Naomi. She’s often quite a tough person due to being the only one out of the girls to be physically attacked that day. Her life wasn’t easy before the attack, and the attack just definitely didn’t make anything else easier after. Despite her hard exterior, his kindness can get her to open up naturally by giving her the time to warm up, and understanding that due to his work, she may think he has ulterior motives at the start. While I understood why the three women were friends Olivia and Cassidy were kinda crappy friends at times so it was nice that Naomi would have this more open-minded and I guess as well neutral person to talk things through with. With all the trauma of the incident coming up with Olivia wanting to talk about the dead body, and Alan dying Naomi starts to question the past and her memory, and Ethan is the better person to go along with her to figure this out.
Overall a super interesting read, it’s definitely tough in areas especially when different characters’ true colours come to light, but if you usually like dark books this one won’t be an issue for you. I totally didn’t see the ending of this book coming at all and had a different idea completely as to how it would go. This is the first book of Kate’s I’ve checked out before but I have to say it’s definitely a great first book of hers to check out. If others of hers are similar in terms of strength I would definitely be interested in checking them out. There were definitely a lot of characters in this book but I didn’t find I had a hard time keeping up.
Have you read What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall before? What did you think?
***Don’t go any further if you don’t want to see any spoilers***
I want to get into the ending a little bit because I did not see it coming at all.
The first thing that I originally suspected and just wasn’t exactly sure about who it was, was that it was not Alan who tried to kill Naomi but one of the girls. The blurb of the book kind of reminded me of that real case that happened the slender man killings I think it was infamously called. Essentially two girls tried to kill their friend as a sacrifice to slender man a fictional video game character. When I read about Persephone I knew that either Cassidy or Olivia or I guess both had tried to kill Naomi. The question was though wtf did Alan Stahl have to do with it, which girl tried to kill Naomi, and who killed the girl in the woods.
Well, the short answer for Naomi is that it’s both the girls. Olivia is mentally ill and as a child most likely not being treated for it yet, but is definitely showing signs. Cassidy who built their friend group becomes jealous when she finds out Naomi and Olivia are hanging out without her she enacts revenge by convincing Olivia to kill Naomi. It’s under the veil of this fantasy world she’s created and telling Olivia that this is what she needs to do to be brought to this fantasy world by Persephone. Olivia stabs Naomi a few times and then chickens out when the job isn’t done, so Cassidy takes over. However, Naomi lives despite their efforts. So, they lie and essentially gaslight Naomi into believing that Stahl attacked them. This all went so smoothly because all the adults were in on it, trying to protect their daughters from the consequences of trying to kill their friend. They blame it on Stahl who is an active killer at the time. Olivia wants to tell Naomi that she tried to kill her, but when everyone wants to let her, even after Stahl dies, she seemingly kills herself.
They also wanted to cover this up because Cassidy’s father and her brother’s best friend were connected to her death. Cassidy’s father was dating a young teen named Jessie, one who was the same age as Cassidy’s older brother, a girl in his grade to be exact. Turns out that Oscar Cassidy’s brother had a bit of a weird best friend. His friend Cody had a big crush on Jessie. When he learned that she was sleeping with the Mayor and his friend’s father he snapped and killed her. Cassidy’s father agreed to help him hide it in exchange for silence.
When Olivia kills herself Naomi eventually figures out what she really wanted to expose, and it’s that they tried to kill her. Cassidy however does not want this to come out. Having known about Persephone’s real identity this whole time she elicits Cody to help her shut Olivia up before she tells Naomi the truth. She just doesn’t anticipate Naomi figuring it out anyway by not believing that Olivia killed herself. Cody desperate to hide his secret goes along with Cassidy’s plan to then kill Naomi once Cassidy learns that she knows. Cody does a double cross killing Cassidy, and then tries to go after Naomi but she gets away in time.
Also turns out Ethan is actually Alan Stahl’s son the whole time with a new name, but that proves to realistically be kind of insignificant throughout the book.
I didn’t see the end coming at all especially because Cody seemed like such an insignificant character at the start but looking back at it now it does make sense that he ended up playing a bigger role in the whole story. Overall the end to the book felt just slightly rushed but was really good nonetheless. The final twists were really enjoyable and sealed the book off well.
I hope you enjoyed this review! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!
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