3.5 stars

We Went To the Woods is a bit of an enigma. It is a combination nature story, eco-friendly experiment, suspense tale, millennial adventure. If that sounds confusing, then you get the point. The plot setup in the Prologue doesn’t seem to connect with the actual conclusion of the book, so we can add that as well.

So, why is my rating not lower? Because for all of the intellectual fault-finding, I couldn’t quit reading this book. For some inexplicable reason, the characters and the premise drew me in and didn’t let go until the last page. I was genuinely concerned for these young people and their drive to follow through on their passionate beliefs.

If the synopsis in any way catches your interest, read this book. It may be dark and difficulty to see, and you may feel turned around at some points, but you will not forget your visit “To the Woods.”

It jumps around a lot, I started reading it and I just couldn't get into it. I am thankful to have received a copy but it was just too hard to get into.

I tried to get into this book, but this is just not my cup of tea. A hippie, off the grid, commune style living, but I wasn't really quite sure what the point of all of it was except for some activism aimed at specific corporations. I was first intrigued by why our main character Mack felt the need to get away because of some huge scandal, but it turns out it was just over some social media "drama" and not something life nor earth shattering. That's when I decided about half way through that it wasn't work my time to finish.

This is the second book I’ve read of Caite Dolan-Leach and I liked her writing.

This story is unique for me as I haven’t read anything about communes before. Caite’s writing makes it sound feasible yet dangerous.

The ups and downs of living off the land, the un-entanglement of monogamous sex, and an uncovered journal lends themselves to a deep story. Add in a neighboring commune with idealist views and things get a bit hinky.

Definitely a recommended read if you want something different.

I wanted to love this book because the premise was intriguing to me. I couldn’t connect to any of the characters and the story seemed very slow in places. I kept reading hoping to get drawn in but wasn’t.

At the heart of this book is an engaging story about how people try to make a life for themselves. But this book kind of defies genres and is a mix of everything.

We Went to the Woods is a very disturbing tale of 5 friends who set out to live "off the grid" and create a modern day utopia, only to find out that such a lifestyle isn't all they expected. The main character, Mack, leaves a disgraced grad school situation, looking to escape and redeem herself and her writing. She experiences love and acceptance with the other residence, as they work the land and barter their produce with other "communes" to maintain their primitive lifestyle. Mack attempts to write a thesis comparing their story with the story of previous residents of the property. The story moves along, sometimes a little slowly, as we learn what is motivating each of the characters' desire to live at the "commune". The ending of the story is hard, but not completely unexpected.

This story is incredibly well written and is quite compelling, however, it is not an "uplifting" read. I would recommend it to readers who enjoy a dark, cold story.

Mack is trying to put her life back together- she made a terrible mistake at work (which is not revealed until almost half way through the book what the mistake actually was) and is trying to get on with her life. She's living with her parents and working a catering job just to try to bring in some money. While on one of her jobs she meets a few friends- she quickly becomes close to them and decides to join them on their journey to pack up and leave life as they knew it behind. They decide to go off the grid pretty much in an experiment living on "the Homestead." There's lots of drama and lust between the five friends throughout the book. It was an interesting concept- and there are definitely times when I wish I could go live off the grid. However, I found the plot to drag a bit and the characters were all unlikable. I do think this was a creative book and written really well. And though I didn't care for the charterers I did want to find out what happens. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Random House for an ARC copy in exchange for an honest review.

Mack really doesn't know what she's getting into when Louisa and Brad invite her to join them, along with Chloe and Jack, at the Homestead, an experiment in living more or less off the grid in the Finger Lakes area. These five come together to grow their own food with the goal of being completely self sufficient. There's no electricity, no running water, and a neighboring farm that does use chemicals. There's also the Collective, a nearby group at a more advanced stage of doing the same thing. Mack's got a scandal in her background which she wants to forget so she doesn't probe too closely into her new friends but then.....Dolan=Leach has done a nice job with creating the claustrophobia of this sort of situation. The characters are terrific (including Argos the dog), there's a little mystery, and there's a little info about early communities in the region. These are millennials to the max but it's a well plotted novel that kept me turning the pages. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. A very good read.

This is one of those books that sits with you days after finishing it. At times the plot was slow but I still wanted to know how it all ended. I did not love the characters except maybe Jack but I still found myself intrigued. I feel like i still have unanswered questions.

Having grown up in the 60's, I'm always drawn to books about cults and communes so this was an interesting novel to read. And while I never had a desire to live off the grid, I understand why young people would choose this lifestyle and attempt to live off of what they can produce on their own. So when Mack, on the heels of an embarrassing scandal, rashly decides to move to the Homestead with four strangers, we realize it's her way of starting over and maybe a chance for her to redeem herself. For a while things work well; they share chores, plant vegetables, swim in the pond, and quite literally share each other. But that isn't where it ends. Some are more reactive and crave challenging the status quo by disrupting the "establishment." And of course, that never ends well. This isn't a thriller and the pacing is often slow, but that didn't bother me as it seemed to mirror the seasons and lifestyle they adopted. Overall, I enjoyed the novel as it's very different from what I'm used to reading!

LOVED this book. The storyline to me was plausible (the living in the woods part), and it's actually something I would love to do at some point in my life. Just leave everything behind and live off the land.

There's a bit of mystery, betrayal, lust. Pretty much all the things that make a book or story good. I thought the author did a great job of pulling me in and making me feel as though I was more than just the reader, but was also part of the story. This book was also on my amazon list and I think it would make a great birthday present for several of my friends.

Overall, I highly recommend.

I didn't get very far into this before putting it down. It's an implausible story of an implausible deathbed confession told by a writer who needs to work very hard on dialogue.

I think it's safe to say I'm not a good match for this authors books. Just not myncup of tea but i encourage other people to try her out. You might find the stiry different than i did. Thank You to Netgalley and Random House Publishing for my honest review

I would give We Went Into the Woods three and a half stars. Seeing that's impossible I'm bumping it up to four. To me this story, by Caite Dolan-Leach, starts very slow. Ms Dolan-Leach keeps us in the dark for quite awhile on what our main character (Mackenzie) had previously done that was so appalling. I was given an early copy to review.

This was a very different and interesting tale of a group of young people who create a small community off the grid. It's full of well developed characters, compelling, descriptive and moving. Although I didn't agree with many of their idealistic views, or even really like each person, I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend this one. Thank you to the publishers for the ARC.

This tells the story of friendship, survival, living, and loving... sort of. I'm fascinated by "cult culture," and so the premise of this book called to me. It delves into one woman's experience, who gets caught up in the living and lying at the Homestead, a remote(ish) living arrangement where the ultimate goal is self sustainability and a "damn the man! mantra.

Unfortunately, I found myself unsatisfied. The author explored so many interesting avenues, however left all of them lacking robustness or a sense of carrying through to the end. There was this revisiting and link to the past that was interested, however was just left there, without bringing it back to the current story and thus felt useless. I suspect the author tried to do "too much" and so the story felt distracted and rambling, and lacked the outcome of a fully fleshed out story.

Lastly, the build up and ending felt anti-climactic. Like, Mack - OUT, mike drop. After everything, I found myself saying: "That it....?" I love an ambiguous ending, and was totally on board with that part of it, however the arc for Mack felt inadequate.

All of that being said, the writing was engaging, the characters were interesting (if anything, I wanted MORE!), and the plot progressed at a decent clip to keep me reading on.

In summary: if the plot intrigues you - give it a go! If not, perhaps skipping this one is advisable.

Our narrator, Mack, is coming off a stint on a reality show that has left America hating her. Desperate to find a fresh start, she is swept up into the idea of The Homestead, an off the grid living community made up of four young adults she has recently become involved with.

Determined to become entirely self-sustaining, so as to fight against capitalism and the environmental disasters they feel are imminent, the five strive to create their own Utopia. But as Mack does research on other such communities, she begins to realize that despite their best intentions, they are all, in the end, only human.

I love a book that is both smart and accessible. Dolan-Leach has a lot to say, but it never feels preachy. Both sides of all the issues are shown in all their beauty and ugliness.

These are some believably complicated characters as well, all thinking they are doing what is best for the world, but still driven by human desires and foibles.

There is also this amazing sense of foreboding hanging over the whole book. From the start, Mack lets the readers know something is going to happen, something she feels she should have seen coming. And whether it's what Mack did on the reality show, what happened to the Oneida community that was there before The Homestead, or what is truly going on at The Collective, a large and seemingly thriving self-sustaining community nearby, there are so many twists and surprises.

I thought I might struggle through the parts about growing vegetables or Utopian philosophy, but Dolan-Leach weaves everything together so well that nothing felt difficult or boring to read.

There were a few parts with animals I struggled with, but that's because it made me really sad what happened to the animals, not because those parts weren't well-written or didn't fit into the narrative.

I would definitely recommend this book. It feels almost like a trend now to say a book is like The Secret History (a book I absolutely love), but I can definitely see really positive similarities in the ways Dolan-Leach explores the concepts of intelligence, communities, relationships, and intentions.

Like most books compared to The Secret History, We Went to the Woods isn’t as good, so let’s just get that out of the way. Which I’m not saying to be spiteful, I just genuinely don’t want to see this book flop because of unrealistically high expectations. Yes, it follows a group of friends who isolate themselves and end up propelled inevitably into tragedy, and yes, it reads like a train wreck in the best kind of way, so it’s an understandable comparison. But it’s also a deeply aggravating book, and I say that as someone who thoroughly enjoyed it.

We Went to the Woods focuses on Mack, a grad school dropout who, fleeing some kind of messy event in her past (more on that in a second), joins a group of idealistic young people who essentially endeavor to live in a modern-day socialist commune. That’s basically the plot: many pages of gardening and rivalries and sexual tension and social activism ensue.

My biggest issue with this book was the way Mack’s backstory was handled: what should have been presented to the reader on page one was nonsensically withheld for a lame kind of ‘gotcha!’ moment halfway through the book that added nothing to the narrative or the suspense. When Mack finally tells her story, it feels like a stranger reciting it rather than the narrator whose head we’d been inhabiting for several hundred pages – so little does the event actually impact her thoughts or actions (other than providing the incentive she needed to abandon her life and join this project).

My other main issue is pace: though I found this compelling, mostly due to Caite Dolan-Leach’s elegant and clever writing, I imagine that for a lot of readers, it’s probably going to drag. With a cover and title like this it’s easy to imagine that you’re in for some kind of thriller, but like We Went to the Woods‘ predecessor, Dead Letters, I fear that this book is going to suffer from ‘marketed as a thriller, gets bad reviews because it’s actually literary fiction’ syndrome. However, where Dead Letters (an underrated gem, in my opinion) is the kind of book where a single word isn’t out of place, We Went to the Woods languishes, unnecessarily so. I can only hope a few hundred more redundant words are chopped before its publication date.

But to be honest, the only reason I’m dwelling so much on the negatives is because I did enjoy it so much – it’s the kind of book that fully earned my investment and therefore frustrated me all the more in the areas where it fell short. That said, there’s so much to recommend it. This book is a contemporary zeitgeist, taking a premise that seems to belong in the 60s and modernizing it with urgency. In a scene where the characters learn the results of the 2016 election, their reactions are almost painfully recognizable, and the book’s main themes and social commentary dovetail again and again, always asking the same question: how important is activism in late-stage capitalism; is it better to try something that turns out to be futile or not try anything at all? Though the characters do quite a bit of moralizing, Dolan-Leach doesn’t, as she recognizes the complexity of the book’s central conceit.

And on top of all that, I found it incredibly entertaining. Slow pace aside, I was so drawn into this story and couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who needs their protagonists to be likable, but if you enjoy character studies about twisted, flawed individuals, this is a pretty good one.

I don’t think this book is a good fit for me. Thank you for the opportunity to review it and I hope to read more from this author in the future.