This time, I turned to a new author to me, Kate Alice Marshall, with her book What Lies in the Woods. The description really tugged at me.
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.
After the attack, the brave trio helped catch a killer. Naomi tried to move forward with her life, but surviving something that brutal leaves marks that never really fade. Physically, she recovered. Emotionally? That’s another story.
Now an adult living in Seattle, Naomi has spent years trying to keep the past buried. She’s built a life that looks normal on the outside, but the memories of that summer never fully let her go.
And then everything starts to unravel.
A podcaster begins digging into the old case, asking questions that nobody has asked in decades. Suddenly, Naomi is forced to confront something she’s avoided for twenty-two years:
The story they told about that summer wasn’t the whole truth.
As Naomi reconnects with Cassidy and Olivia, the carefully constructed narrative around the attack begins to crack. Each of them remembers the events differently, and it quickly becomes clear that secrets from that summer run much deeper than anyone ever realized.
The woods where the girls once played their imaginary Goddess Game suddenly feel less like a childhood fantasy and more like the setting of something far darker.
As Naomi starts digging into what really happened, she realizes that the danger may not be entirely in the past. Someone clearly wants the truth to stay buried. The closer she gets to understanding what happened that night, the more she begins to question everything—her friends, her memories, and even herself.
Because if the man they put behind bars isn’t the whole story…
Then what really happened in the woods?
My personal thoughts?
This book hooked me right away. I love a story that slowly peels back the layers, and this one definitely does that. Just when I thought I understood what was happening, another piece of the puzzle would surface and make me question everything again. The shifting memories, the complicated friendships, and the lingering trauma from that summer kept the tension high the entire time.
It’s one of those stories where you’re constantly wondering who you can trust—and whether the truth will actually set anyone free once it finally comes out.
Overall, What Lies in the Woods was a gripping, twisty read that kept me guessing the entire time. I really enjoy stories that slowly reveal the truth piece by piece, and this one definitely delivers. The complicated friendships, the lingering trauma from that summer, and the question of whether we can ever truly trust our own memories made this one hard to put down. If you enjoy psychological thrillers that keep you questioning what really happened until the very end, this is definitely one to add to your list.