The God of the Woods

Overall a pretty good book. The author takes us on a long winding journey and then sets up the central conflict that needs resolution and then proceeds to present many compelling solutions to the story That's why it never really the book threatens with the appearance of the serial killer to become as much thriller as it is mystery but the book never really gets to be thrilling. The mystery is quite well conceived. It's quite well concealed throughout the entirety of the novel. The pacing is quite good The characters are relatively sympathetic although the red herring antagonists are somewhat caricatured and made out to be the mustache twirling bad guys so when the final reveal does land it lands with a sort of manipulative emotional impact more than anything else but overall the cast of characters are well fleshed out. The novel is well paced. The resolution is somewhat tacked on because in order to allow the present day storyline to thrive there needed to be a convoluted connection to the past tense storyline. Essentially there are two mysteries going on. The past tense murder mystery and the present tense missing girl mystery. In order to allow the past mystery to go and get solved the present one needed to be prescient and it also needed to be filled with stakes. The problem is is that at a certain point the present day mystery got completely forgotten about for all the pump and furor of the past one being finally solved. So instead of balancing the two neatly we essentially allowed one of them to drop while the other one took center stage. The fact that the novel ends with a missing girl a few miles north while her mother is being essentially incarcerated and her father and grandfather are being incarcerated just feels a little bit I guess it's the 70s so you can say that these things may fly but the core stakes got dropped a little bit in the middle. But when it comes to the pros pretty workmanlike the plot and the narrative are strong but at the same time not particularly memorable besides for the bait and switch at the end. The character work is strong. The female detective is sympathetic. The Tracy girl while narratively unimportant is well fleshed out. The Vanlar family are enigmatic. Delphine is she didn't really get a lot of work and then at the end dropping her betrayal just essentially tried to make Alice more sympathetic but didn't actually impact the narrative in any way. At that point Alice was so far gone on medication and grief that- It would have probably worked better had it landed earlier in the narrative. TJ, whatever her name is, Tessie Jo, she is pretty good. She's a pretty good character but at the same time she was built up towards being something and her mysterious relationship with Bear is hinted at and then it really came to nothing. She helped- She essentially kidnapped a little girl at the end and was made to be a hero with her weird little face. Fling in the middle with which leads me to Louise who as a character was interesting but a placeholder again. Nothing much happened to her. She was screwed over and she was set up essentially to be able to tell John Paul's story without having to see his mind which will obviously give everything away and she didn't actually fit into the narrative at all. Her story with her little brother is weak. Her story with her mother is weak and I'm unresolved. Her story with John Paul is pretty weak and unresolved. So the characters are maybe a little weaker than I originally thought. As far as thematic depth there's not much there. It's a mystery. It's solved. As far as the atmosphere of the novel that's actually quite strong. You do feel that unique Adirondack experience where- Yeah, you feel it. You feel the campgrounds, you feel the beauty of the land, you feel the atmosphere of the time and the place and the culture of this aristocratic family contrasted against the working class people of Shuddick, whatever it's called. As far as originality is concerned it's not particularly original. The mystery is pretty- It's done well. Having a campground mystery is not original at all but having a camp that's appended to an estate with- A clear division of power and the backstory and the historical aspect of it is somewhat original so I'll give it to them. The resolution is weak but shocking. I'll give them that. The rug pull at the end with Alice being the culprit is strong but at the same time the resolution is not so strong. The emotional impact is not there. I didn't care enough about any of the characters really to unpack it like I don't think I'd tear it up a single time though no storylines or through lines that particularly moved me. Re-readability not much at all in fact now that i know the story would i read it again nope that je ne sais quoi that thing that i can't describe but as a writer myself look reading a novel thinking could i do that myself or like wow that's so clever it has a little bit of that- it's clever, it's done well, it's not just a run-of-the-mill Colleen Hoover story or run-of-the-mill assembly line mystery also because it doesn't have that thriller aspect that mystery thriller or murder mystery never really happens it's just a mystery that gets solved pretty simply with no one really hurt as far as the immersion is concerned i couldn't put the book down i will be fair and there was very good pacing that allowed me to just run through it as far as genre satisfaction is concerned ill strong if this was trying to be a mystery book it delivered and the author's voice pretty nondescript like tell me this was written by like liz moore meant nothing to me i'm not running to read more liz moore books because yeah