I know you're not supposed to judge books by their covers, but the cover was what attracted me to this one. Then I read the blurb, and knew I wanted to read it. I'm kind of fascinated - in a kind of horrified way - by wilderness therapy programmes. So a wilderness therapy programme as a setting for a horror with monsters? Go ahead and take my hard-earned money.
The book opens with Devin, an unruly foster kid who's been in trouble for years, being dragged out of her bedroom by a couple of strangers Next thing she knows, she's deep in the Idaho woods with a group of other, equally confused kids. Eventually, a couple of counsellors tell them they're in a wilderness therapy programme and they have fifty days to survive out here and to change their destructive behaviour.
Initially determined to escape, Devin keeps herself apart from the other kids, especially the bitch Sheridan, a lavender-haired bully who does her best to tear apart every exercise the group undertakes. But as they get deeper into the woods, strange things start happening. Faces from their pasts start appearing amongst the trees. And then suddenly, both counsellors disappear, leaving the kids alone with no map and no certainty that the food drops they've been receiving will still come.
As they try to figure out how to save themselves, it becomes apparent that perhaps the shape-shifting monsters creeping between the trees are not the most dangerous threat they're facing. it might be each other.
This was one of those books that so beautifully weaves together real life and mythological horror. It's eerie and atmospheric and has some excellent characters who really grow and change across the course of the book. Some of the "issues" that brought the kids to the therapy camp were a little slight, in my opinion, but that probably reflects more on those kids' parents than on them.
So, overall, I would recommend this one. It's creepy and fast-paced and quite genuinely scary in places - although not always in the ways you would expect.
But don't just listen to me. Here's the blurb:
Yellowjackets meets Girl, Interrupted when a group of troubled teens in a wilderness therapy program find themselves stranded in a forest full of monsters eager to take their place.
Devin Green wakes in the middle of the night to find two men in her bedroom. No stranger to a fight, she calls to her foster parents for help, but it soon becomes clear this is a planned abduction—one everyone but Devin signed up for. She’s shoved in a van and driven deep into the Idaho woods, where she’s dropped off with a cohort of equally confused teens. Finally, two camp counselors inform them that they've all been enrolled in an experimental therapy program. If the campers can learn to change their self-destructive ways—and survive a fifty-days hike through the wilderness—they’ll come out the other side as better versions of themselves. Or so the counselors say.
Devin is immediately determined to escape. She’s also determined to ignore Sheridan, the cruel-mouthed, lavender-haired bully who mocks every group exercise. But there’s something strange about these woods—inhuman faces appearing between the trees, visions of people who shouldn't be there flashing in the leaves—and when the campers wake up to find both counselors missing, therapy becomes the least of their problems. Stranded and left to fend for themselves, the teens quickly realize they’ll have to trust each other if they want to survive. But what lies in the woods may not be as dangerous as what the campers are hiding from each other—and if the monsters have their way, no one will leave the woods alive.
Atmospheric and sharp, What the Woods Took is a poignant story of transformation that explores the price of becoming someone—or something—new.
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