This one's creepy and atmospheric, shifting in time between a group of soldiers who entered the woods hundreds of years ago and didn't emerge and a group of modern day academics who are trying to make sense of two very old and inaccurate maps. It also shifts between forests -- the one they believe they're in and someplace else. Trees appear and disappear. They find buildings and artifacts that make no sense. They get lost. It's a slow burn that reminded me a lot of the Blair Witch Project

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an e-arc of this book. I thought that the characters were compelling, and the story was interesting. The ending felt rushed, but overall, it was a solid read.

This novel had a very promising premise, but it ultimately fell flat for me, in the way magical realism always does for me. Because, for me The Dark Between the Trees ended up feeling more like magical realism than horror. Sure there is a monster, but the monster is just a trapped soul in the forest like all the rest of them.
In the 17th century, a group of soldiers are ambushed on a hill and the survivors escape into Moresby forest, only to never be seen again. In the present day, a group of five women enter that same forest to attempt to uncover evidence of what happened to those missing shoulders. The novel is told in alternating chapters, from the point of view of the soldiers and then the point of view of the researchers.
The structure was really interesting, and created unique parallels between the two groups that I enjoyed. However, the story was so predictable, and while it felt ominous and intriguing early on, it got quite boring at the end. Overall, the writing was lovely, but the plot of this one just wasn't my cup of tea.

DNF

Unfortunately this just wasn't for me. It's much too slow to build any kind of suspense and I became too bored to even bother picking this back up again.

Thank you to NetGalley and Rebellion for my complimentary copy.

The premise of this book was great: a research team sets out to explore an ancient forest where hundreds of years ago an group of men disappeared, leaving behind one survivor with an unbelievable tale of am invisible monster and two forests which shift back and forth when you're not looking.

Creepy forest, ancient evil, rain and mist, technology that won't work... it all makes an interesting story, to be sure, but the writing drags the story back in ways that I'm afraid will make many readers stall halfway through. Things move at a snail's pace in this one, and the alternating chapters between the group of men long ago and the group of women today always seem to end just as something interesting happens. There are over a dozen characters to keep straight, none that truly stand out, and the head-hopping had me constantly trying to remember who was who and which character had which personality.

In the end, an OK story but nothing that really excited me.

The Dark Between The Trees by Fiona Barnett.
1643: A small group of Parliamentarian soldiers are ambushed in an isolated part of Northern England. Their only hope for survival is to flee into the nearby Moresby Wood... unwise though that may seem. For Moresby Wood is known to be an unnatural place, the realm of witchcraft and shadows, where the devil is said to go walking by moonlight... Seventeen men enter the wood. Only two are ever seen again, and the stories they tell of what happened make no sense. Stories of shifting landscapes, of trees that appear and disappear at will... and of something else. Something dark. Something hungry.
An OK read. Found this slow but readable. 3*.

Really creepy and haunting folk horror. Loved the historical aspect of this, though I don't think it was fully horror-just supernatural. The ending was a bit of a let down but it was fun nontheless.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this book. I’m glad it is a book I got to read in October, as it was a great horror/thriller book to keep me a little nervous during this spooky season.

The story follows two groups, an army in the 1600s and researchers in the modern time trying to solve the mystery of what happened to the army, which is an interesting premise. The only complaint I have with this format is that very similar things kept happening to the groups in alternating chapters, so it felt like I read the same story twice with minor alterations in characters. This made it go quite slow to me, especially in the beginning.

Even despite its slow pace, I was hanging on the edge of my seat waiting to see exactly what the mystery was and what was causing it. For this, I really liked the book as it kept me hooked and plugging along trying to figure it out. Unfortunately, the ending left a little to be desired for me, and I was hoping for a bit more.

I occasionally love a good horror story and this one fit the bill. The horror is more cerebral than gory which is how I like a good horror story to be. I am also a fan of English history so was drawn to the dual time period set during the English Civil War.

The story alternates between the present with an expedition into Moresby Woods, led by Dr. Alice Christopher to investigate the disappearance of a group of soldiers who fled into the woods in 1643 and most were never seen again. Dr. Christopher has dreamt of solving this mystery for years. Local Folklore states the woods are haunted and those that enter may not come out again. Dr. Christopher and her expedition find themselves trapped in the woods where their technology does not work and their sense of time and space is compromised. Will they regretfully share the same fate as the missing soldiers?

I really enjoyed the dual time narrative and the unraveling of the creepy happenings. The ending was a bit ambigous but I did not mind that. This was a wonderful read for this time of year as night draws earlier and the air is chilled.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher Rebellion Solaris and the author for the chance to read and review this book

The Dark Between The Trees had a creepy folk type feel to it which I was really intrigued by. I liked the creepy forest England setting and the idea of ancient creatures lurking from within the trees. However, this book was very slow burning... and not really in a good way. I also had a hard time liking or connecting with any of the characters which made it a bit difficult to get through the story. I think horror fans with the patience for drawn out suspense and slow burn mystery will enjoy this one.

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This is a book for those steeped in academia who want the mystery to remain a mystery.

The telling alternates between the perspective of the five modern day women and the 17 soldiers in 1643. I liked how the journeys of the two groups paralleled each other while having enough different things occurring to remain engaging. But I never felt like I truly got to know any one character in a well-rounded way. They all felt like two-dimensional drawings. I don’t mind this in a traditional horror/thriller. The point isn’t the characters. But this story struck me as a less traditional mystery that remains unsolved. It’s not like Scream or Cabin in the Woods. It takes itself seriously and, thus, my standards for characterization are higher and remain unmet.

I like the monster in the woods. It has a cool name – the Corrigal. It’s deliciously creepy. But it’s essentially dropped in the last few chapters as a red herring. That would be fine if something scarier replaced it. But it doesn’t.

As someone who spent many years in academia, this book reads like a speculative wish fulfillment. The lead historian is a woman who others in her department think is wrongfully obsessed with the woods. She struggles to win awards when the man in her department does. It took her years to fund this trip. The narrative tells us this over and over again. The book tries to show us that the historian was right. If a bit cruel to her postdoc student. But I was left feeling like this was a speculative exploration of everything wrong with academia without the text being self-aware that this is what it was doing.

I’ve categorized it a mystery, because to me it wasn’t thrilling or horrific. It was a puzzle the women set out to solve and fail to do so in any satisfying way. The bit of chills that built in the beginning fizzle by the end.

If you enjoy 1640s history interspersed with watching a bunch of academics flail helplessly about in the woods and don’t mind an unresolved mystery then this will be a great match for you.

GoodReads:
This is a book for those steeped in academia who want the mystery to remain a mystery.

I liked the alternating perspective chapters. The monster in the woods.

I didn't like the characterization (2-dimensional). The fact that it wasn't thrilling or horrific (just a mystery that remains unsolved). That it reads like speculative academic wish fulfillment.

Check out my full review.

*I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.*

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Five women head into Moresby Woods on a historian’s academic expedition to discover what happened to a unit of 17 Parliamentarian soldiers in 1643. Only 2 soldiers survived the wood. How many women will?
This is a book for those steeped in academia who want the mystery to remain a mystery. Loved the alternating 1640s and modern day chapters. Didn’t love the unresolved mystery or 2-dimensional characters.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the free copy in exchange for my honest review.

#bookalicious #booksinthewild #avidreader #bookaesthetic #whatimreading #bookrecs #booksinthewoods

3.5/5

The creepiness in the present narrative works beautifully here but the past narrative was just a tad boring and ruined it mostly for me. A mild recommend from me and it’s for sure worthy of your time.

Thank you for this opportunity!

Thanks to Rebellion Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC.

The Dark Between Trees follows two groups in different time periods who have entered the apparently haunted Moresby forest in England. The first is a group of soldiers escaping an ambush by fleeing into the forest. The second is a group of five professional women who enter with the hope of figuring out what happened to the group of soldiers. The story flips between each group as they work their way into the woods and mysterious events begin to plague each group.
The story has terrific atmosphere and descriptions of the forest. You can really feel the closeness of the trees, the press of the weather and overall creepiness of the setting. There is a slow build up to the reveals and there were several "oh dang" moments that were surprising. As for the characters, I liked Davies, the Captain of the fleeing soldiers, but we don't get near enough time or background on him and would have liked more. Of the women, I have to say Alice was a bit abrasive and I just didn't connect much with the others. While the overall feel and pace to the story was good, the ending fell a bit flat, was expecting more of a reveal here. Some of the threads weren't wrapped up in an impactful way. It left me wanting more for a satisfying ending.

I found this a really curious book, but an enjoyable one, if ‘enjoyable’ is the right word. I don’t often read horror books of this type, and can find them a bit hit and miss; as a whole The Dark Between the Trees was a hit, even if I did have a few issues.

Its biggest strength is its atmosphere. Barnett has quite a distinct writing style that flows well and is very engaging - after a certain point I struggled to put it down. She also creates a very effective sense of impending doom, from the moment our characters enter the wood. The story creeps along; there’s almost a plodding nature to it, reflecting the characters slow progress through the forest, but the pacing never slipped into being slow. This wasn’t the most exciting book, but there was a constant sense of Something Is About To Happen. I dreaded every moment they fell asleep, every moment someone wandered off path, every moment someone wandered off-path.

The story is told from two perspectives: a group of female academics, surveyors, and park rangers from the present day, and a group of male soldiers fleeing an ambush during the First English Civil War. I thought this atmosphere was maintained well through both stories and it was easy to see as it went on where certain plot points were starting to converge or echo each other. I also found it to be the main drawback. I usually find in a book which is split between two different plotlines that there’s always one that becomes more interesting, and in this case, the chapters featuring the soldiers were far better, in my opinion. I thought the development of the characters of the soldier were far more distinct and well-drawn; the women in the present day felt more like cardboard cutouts, with the exception of Nuria and Alice. It made it harder for me to care about what happened to them.

This was a shame as I thought there were some interesting parallels between the two different plotlines, the characters, and how they reacted to the things that were happening to them. I don’t know if there was meant to be significance in making the group in the future all women, but I did think there were some interesting differences in how their stories played out, as well as similarities.

I also would have liked the ending to be a little bit more definitive, but at the same time, I knew a few chapters in this book wasn’t going to have a neat ending. This book is what it is: it’s creeping, unsettling, dark, weird, with some moments of genuinely beautiful storytelling. If you want to read a folk horror that focuses more on creating a sense of unease than shocking you, this would be perfect. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a free copy of this book.

Content Notes: Violence, gun violence, scenes of warfare, death, blood, serious injuries, animal death, gore.

As always I want to start by saying that I was given a copy of this to review. My review is honest and left voluntarily and avoids spoilers. #Rebellion #Solaris #FionaBarnett #TheDarkBetweenTheTrees #Netgalley

I adore horror and it’s subgenres but the idea of folk and cosmic horrors are some of my favourites. The Dark Between the Trees merges these genres with elements of historical fiction and survival horror was to create a superbly atompsheric novel that is perfect for spooky season, or if you love horror all year.

Following dual narratives Barnett creates a bridge between time as we follow a small group of Parliamentarian soldiers in 1643 were seventeen men entered the woods but only two were ever found again and five women in present day in search of the evidence of the missing group and what really happened all those years ago.

Of course there are some tropes that may seem familiar, starting to feel watched while traversing the woods, the group beginning to fall out and so on but Barnett takes these tropes and makes them their own. The suspense is kept through-out and you are always left wondering who will survive or who will get out alive.

I particularly enjoyed the alternating chapters between past and present and seeing how both groups are seemingly following the same path as the other. It added to the sense of uncanny and unease. We already know that most of the soldiers are never seen again but we don’t know why and has the present day group follow the same route we begin to wonder if history will repeat itself.

I particularly loved the end. Again spoiler free, but how the idea of history continuing to repeat is presented in a sort of spiral starting again. Definitely one to read if you love folk horror and a well developed plot. The characters were not all likable and I did find myself a little detached from a few but it didn’t take away my enjoyment. I will definitely be recommending it to those who love a good atmospheric read.

The Dark Between the Trees by Fiona Barnett is an eerily creepy tale. It straddles the border of horror and scifi, with rich descriptions and fully-realized characters. The narrative bounces between present day and past, giving the reader a dawning sense of dread over what awaits our protagonists. Definitely one for fans of movies like The Descent and The Ritual.

8.5/10

Thank you to Rebellion Publishing for accepting my eArc request on Netgalley for this book. As always this doesn’t affect the honesty of my review!

Hello again dear reader, it is October and spooky season is on 🎃. So how about a review for a surrealist gothic folk-thriller?? That sounds like a bit of a mouthful but broken down in other terms this is the kind of book that is 80% just supernatural vibes surrounding a very simple plot that will have you coming out of it more than a little confused but satisfied nonetheless.

Barnett employs one of the story telling devices I enjoy the most which is unfolding parallel plots, one in the past and one in the present.

I love the way these two storylines always complement each other, as well as how one can foreshadow what might happen to the other or alternatively become a red herring rather so that you never quite know what to expect.

Moreover the author knows how to create ambiance so that even while I was reading this under the summer sun and at the beach, I felt that little tendril of fog crawl up my spine. I also loved how much the author worked the forest’s sounds into the narrative, going further that just mentioning bird song or the wind among the branches. Moresby Wood felt like more of a living breathing character than any of the protagonists and honestly? I wasn’t even too mad about it.

As I said at the start, this was more about the vibes than anything to me and I reveled in it.

This did mean however that I had a bit of a hard time singling out characters or needing a while to figure out that the pov had actually changed until I got more familiar with all the individual names. Some stood out more than others of course but even then I occasionally lost a beat in needing to figure out whose eyes I was seeing through exactly. (Side note this only happened within either of the two timelines of course, as past and present were clearly divided.)

That said, Barnett also did a great job at showing characters slowly devolving at their worst, emotionally and psychologically breaking them down, each in the different ways that come with wildly different personalities! Be it a group of tired academics or scared and wounded soldiers, each trying to figure out an ancient curse or myth that cannot be unraveled, in order to leave the place that has become their ever changing and predatory prison.

I also really liked Dr Alice Christopher’s monomania over uncovering the secrets of what happened to the soldiers that got lost in the wood, having dedicated her entire academic career to it. Our very own modern Captain Ahab! I feel like any academic can relate to her when it comes to struggling for funding their research. Whereas Nuria, a student at the end of her dissertation, was the character I could relate to more and ultimately felt the most for.

Monomaniacal characters are extremely fascinating to me, especially when the author can show that devolution or character decay in a gradual but inexorable manner that really hooks the reader. Barnett, I think, did pretty well in that regard here!

As for the overall plot it’s fairly straightforward and when you come right down to it not much actually happens rather than is witnessed by the characters, and, by the very end, the story definitely doesn’t resolve itself in any way that I would’ve expected. I feel like that was the point though all along. Sometimes you don’t find the answers and there’s nothing you can do about it. Or the ones that you do find are not what you wanted.

The very end of the book even left me quite impressed as I found it quite a gutsy move to wrap things up the way that Barnett did. To me it fit within the whole theme and vibe of the story but to others it may seem completely different if not downright contentious! I’m actually looking forward to more people reading this so that I can discuss it with someone!

The Dark Between the Trees comes out tomorrow October 11th and it is the perfect spooky and eerie read for anyone looking for a gothic folk story with incredible ambiance, creatures that prowl in the dark and an enemy that isn’t quite what you’d expect. Also, if you’re in any way involved in academia this book will speak to your deepest peeves and you’ll feel understood hahah.

Until next time,

Eleni A. E.

In 1643, a small group of soldiers under ambush make a desperate and unfortunate decision to enter Moresby Woods, an area known to be the home of an unnatural monster. Seventeen soldiers enter, only two escape.
Now, a research group is on a mission to discover what really happened to those soldiers. Armed with the written account of one of the soldiers and an old map, plus every electronic gadget they can carry, they enter the woods. But nothing can prepare them for what they find...
It took me a long time to try and review this book. I finished and sat thinking "Wow what the heck did I just read?" Don't get me wrong, I was glued to the page, wrapped up in the suspense, anxious for the characters, and wondering who will survive, if any. But... how to describe it?!! Trust me, read it for yourself if you love spooky books!
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

You know that deeply unsettling sense you sometimes get when you’re deep in the forest or bush, or walking past it, where it feels like someone is watching you?

It’s a cloyingly unnerving sense that you are not alone, egged on by flashes of movement you swear you see in your peripheral vision or a strange occurrence of that evolutionarily advantageous sense that someone is behind you, soon to attack you.

It’s almost always a product of an overactive imagination, but in the case of The Dark Between the Trees, the superbly creepy new novel from Fiona Barnett, it’s real, it’s happening and it must be heeded.

Not that anyone in the group who enters Moresby Wood in the middle of England is giving any talk of bogeymen and monsters much heed, despite the legion of folk tales that something very dark and wholly untroubling lurks in the dark interior of the ancient forest.

Led by Dr Alice Christopher, who is an expert on the Wood and the history of the 17th century group of Parliamentarian soldiers who fled into it never to be seen again, bar two survivors with impossible-to-believe stories to tell, the group of academics also includes Christopher’s student, Nuria Martins, who simply wants to be in a library somewhere reading and writing, and who, rather wisely, has a bad feeling about venturing near the place that is creepy in just about every possible way.

She should, naturally, have heeded her inner intuitive warnings.

For in the grand style of every seemingly innocent study that reduces down scary folk tales down to academic musing, Christopher has grossly underestimated what lies deep in Moresby Wood, a place of witches and monsters where the Devil himself is said to roam, seeking those whom he may devour.

The good doctor believes none of this, though she is convinced that there is something utterly otherworldly and strange about the Wood, something that defies common sense and logic and which places this near-magical forest into a realm far beyond our modern rationalist digital age.

But rationalism is as much a victim as the foolhardy souls who brave the Wood, as The Dark Between the Trees progresses chillingly ever onward, deeper into the trees which confoundingly seem to shift at will, there one night and gone the next morning, something both the academics and soldiers experience, their stories told in alternating chapters that don’t ever interrupt the story flow but burnish and build it until you are looking far too intently in the shadows lurking in the corners of your room or questioning the seeming blurs of movement that seem to occur on the very margins of your sight.

Much as Christopher and the others in her group treat the folk tales of many centuries old as hearsay and curiosities, the reality is that Moresby Wood cares nothing for their remove from its magical terror, every bit as it disregards Parliamentarian leader Captain Davies who treats with contempt some of the local soldiers’ tales of darkness at work within the trees which you treat lightly at your peril.

Quite what lurks in the murky scariness of The Dark Between the Trees is left, as much as it is explained at all – the sense of mystery that Barnett creates and masterful sustains is a thing of brilliance and finely wrought fright – to the final chapters of a novel that leaves you guessing throughout while waving a thrillingly intense story of how easily the bonds between us fray when unbridled terror makes its unwelcome presence felt.

It is the way a shared sense of community between very different people, some reluctantly thrown together like the soldiers, or mostly drawn together willingly like the academics, very quickly unravels that makes The Dark Between the Trees such a fascinating read.

This fracturing of group unity is something we see in a lot of creepy adventures into the unknown, one of the most memorable examples for this reviewer being the film Annihilation, but Barnett uses it superlatively well, underscoring how much the mental and emotional stresses of the barely seen or understood threat plaguing both groups is really what drives them into danger, more so than what is possibly pursuing them through the woods.

There is, of course, something darkly, devilishly dangerous in Moresby Wood and it makes it ancient presence felt in ways that fuel the narrative in ways terrifying and freakishly alarming, but there are more than a few occasions whenever the idea of whatever lurks in the shadows and blurred movement is far less of a threat than the way in which the beleaguered members of the two groups surrender any sense of rationality or quiet comfort in the known and well-established civilisational norms.

Again, while the monster within versus than without is hardly a new idea in these types of stories, Barnett consistently uses it thrillingly well, very quickly and with surprising depth acquainting us with characters who we come to understand thoroughly enough that their actions quickly make sense to us, allowing us to identify with a situation which is fantastical, yes, but also intensely, relatably human.

We all fear what we can’t explain and while many cling to civilisational certainty and the power of logic and clear thinking, the idea that something scary this may comes, something well beyond the rational status quo, it’s all too easy to throw that to the panicked wind, giving in to an evolutionary holdover that suspects we are always in danger and that it lurks in places long held to be evil, a designation that we often easily ridicule, but do not easily, or without great cost, cast aside.

In fact, try as they might, neither Davies nor Christopher, as the leaders of their respective groups, can silence the talk of Devilish mayhem, nor put aside the idea that the Wood exists in a dark realm with which we are poorly acquainted, and it’s this great battle between mind and instinct that makes The Dark Between the Trees such a terrifically (in the true sense of the word) frightening but enthrallingly clever read, one that lingers with you long after the final page is turn, leaving you wondering if something didn’t just rush by you, just out of rational sight …

A perfect spooky season read!

Five women head into the Moresby Woods….Dr Christopher - obsessed with what happened there many years ago, the other ladies, each with their own role to play in the expedition (not quite) blindly following her lead…

The old stories…the monster….absolutely ridiculous old tales…

Switching between the past and the ladies, this is a great creepy read, a must for the spooky season! It left me with a chill..

My thanks to Netgalley and Rebellion for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review