In this graphic novel from DC Comics' new original horror imprint, two girls wake up with a hole in their memories. It isn't all that unusual for Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania, where women routinely wake up in strange places, not knowing how they got there. Besides the epidemic of amnesia among its female population, the town suffers also from fiery mines that crack open the earth, skinless men that emerge from these fissures, and strange dark creatures in the woods. El and Octavia just happen to have grown up here, but now that the town's troubles have afflicted them, they need to decide whether to find out what it is that they forgot.

DaNi's dark, inky illustrations set a perfect tone for the surreal, character-driven story and root it in its 90s setting. The character designs are distinctive and accessible—which is crucial when the heart of the story is the relationship between El and Octavia. Although both girls are queer, they are not together, yet it is their love for each other, their investment in each other, and their occasional conflicts with one another that carry the story.

Fans of Machado's writing will recognize her penchant for transmuting real life social horrors into the fantastical tropes of horror fiction. Every strange horror in Shudder-to-Think has human awfulness behind it, and that is what gives The Low, Low Woods its power. Because ultimately, this is a story about women and girls, especially queer women and girls—their agency, their trauma, and how they survive.

Holy cow. Holy absolute cow. I read a lot of horror, it's my genre of choice. So things don't usually get to me anymore. I can read scary, gory stuff and think it's cool or innovative or scary in the moment, but it takes a special type of horror to sit with me and this is it.

Graphic novel was the perfect format for this. It's only 168 pages but every single one packs a punch. The illustrations are gorgeous and haunting. The two "monsters" are a visceral type of horror that already strangely set me on edge before I got into the plot but...the plot. Remembering and forgetting and what does it mean to forget? Can the body really forget? What does trauma do over time? How can it leap out of your body like darkness? Oh my god, I want to scream about this from the rooftops. It is both perfectly contained within these issues and I also want to know every single detail about El, Octavia, Jessica, Circe, the witch, every single horrendous thing about Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania.

Carmen Maria Machado has created something absolutely exquisite in my opinion. This is the second Hill House Comic I've read and I'm again blown away. I've got my eye on that pop-up and a new favorite graphic novel of all time with The Low, Low Woods.

Carmen Maria Machado’s first work in comics is as skilled and assured as any of her prior writing. This is a story that’s going to be stuck in my brain for quite some time after reading..

strange (in a good way), beautifully illustrated, poignant and powerful in its metaphors. one of my favorites of the Hill House comics serious/imprint.

The town of Shudder-to-Think, Pennsylvania has a dark history involving manipulative men and an angry witch. When El and Vee are forced to either ignore what's happening or face it, they uncover something much more sinister than they could have imagined. This story was a good concept, but the construction was hard to follow.

Twisted but satisfying, nostalgic but fresh, fun but heavy, this comic is a horrorshow that you don't want to miss.

This was an interesting graphic novel. I'm a fan of Carmen Maria Machado's writing, but there were some pacing issues with this and I didn't feel like I knew the characters all that well by the end of the graphic novel. That being said, there are a lot of really interesting ideas in here about power and the things we choose to acknowledge and remember. The art was also really cool . The thin lines and the deep colors add additional weight and mystery, as well as spooky ambience to the story. In some ways, the style reminded me of some issues of Sandman, and the works of Junji Ito. It's a very good horror/fantasy style.

It's definitely worth a look for anyone interested in that unique mix of horror/fantasty/social commentary that Machado does so well.

I love it. LOVE IT!!! I'm a fan of horror and graphic novels, and this not only didn't disappoint it freakin' AMAZED me. Visually stunning with a captivating story that is both horrifying and empowering. I just finished it and can't stop thinking about it. This is my favorite read of the year so far and if I could give it more than 5 stars I would.

Thank you to DC Books and Netgalley for this digital ARC.

This was an interesting and somewhat polarizing title. For me I found it to be clunky. The pacing of the story seemed off and it felt like the writer through things at a wall they thought would be cool but either did not fully have a plan or was rushed to their ending. I say that because there are a lot of interesting bits here like magic, witches, skinless men, and other supernatural things but some of it felt tacked on, such as our main characters having a Corsican Brothers body link. The plot is good but as I have said it felt rushed at the end where much of the explanation for the story is told through pretty much the entirety of the final issue in this volume.

The Low, Low Woods, written by Carmen Maria Machado and part of Joe Hill's Hill House Comics, is a horror story that deals with the theme of endemic sexual violence against women and the cost of remembering or forgetting. Set in the small, fictional Pennsylvania town of Shudder-to-Think (seemingly somewhat modeled off Centrali, except haunted). The story follows two high school seniors (best friends) who wake up in a movie theater with no memory of the movie and a feeling something bad has happened to them. One, El, wants to find out the truth, while the other, Octavia, isn't so keen on learning what actually happened to them. However, as we who read a lot know, secrets don't stay buried for long, and the rest of this story is filled with skinless dead dudes, hybrid animal things, witches, and magical waters.

Overall, I enjoyed the tale and will read more in the series. I don't love the art, but the story is compelling enough to keep me turning the pages. I'm already a fan of Machado, having read Her Body and other Parties, and she has a way of working with the weird that I really like. Plus she incorporates themes and characters that we need to see more in all kinds of literature. That said, this does feel like a but of a hodgepodge of horror tropes that don't always entirely play well together. It's one of those stories set in a town that's just weird (kind of like Sunnydale or Greendale) in ways that everyone, except one or two people, accepts for some reason. There's also some unevenness in the story telling, whether it's starting us in a place where we don't really understand why the one character is freaking out about falling asleep in a movie theater or a prolonged flashback that seems to go one a bit too long. Still., it gets a thumbs up from me!

I really didn't enjoy this as much as the other two Hill House collections currently on NetGalley (Basketful of Heads and The Dollhouse Family). Two female friends who live in a dying Pennsylvania coal town uncover a big secret that changes their lives. It's certainly artistic, but the story is just a bit too surreal for me (deer women, sinkholes opening up in people, burned men periodically coming up out of coal seams?). This just wasn't for me.

What would you do to regain back the memories you had lost? In the town Shudder-to-Think, El and Octavia (or Vee) are two best friends who find themselves having no recollection of watching a movie that they had watched. As the two friends go on a journey to locate those memories, El and Vee encounter untold stories and the monsters that haunt Shudder-to-Think. Machado creates a new story for the horror genre that will make readers realize the importance of memories, while the illustrations by Dani takes them back to the past of 1980s horror comics.

Holy shit. Holy shit. I just finished this graphic novel and, friends, I truly do not see myself as someone who gets legitimately rattled easily — books may make me emotional, but rarely do they get under my skin and stay there — but I feel like The Low, Low Woods is going to linger in my bones for a long, long time to come. That's not because it's scary, but because it is horrifying, not in the haunted houses and ghosts sort of way, but in a sinister, nauseating manner that I never saw coming.

There is so little I can say without spoiling the entire thing, so instead, I'll just tell you that Carmen Maria Machado is one of the most brilliant creative minds I've ever seen and I cannot possibly recommend this story highly enough. It carries her signature speculative taste and bleak outlook on the world, despite following characters you can't avoid loving and rooting for (and naturally, it features queer women of color as the main characters, because we can always count on CMM to give us beautiful diversity in her dark little tales) ♥).

All of my appreciation not only to CMM for crafting this story, but to DC and the Hill House Comics team for helping this twisted creation come into being.

Well, this went in a direction I was NOT expecting, and it ended with a gut punch straight to the feels, but damn it was good. I can't say much about it without throwing out a LOT of spoilers but I guess what I can say is, friendships are golden, even when you think forgetting is bad remembering can be way worse, and men are absolute trash.