This was a fair YA story. It wasn't particularly scary. It did have some creepiness to it. I think this would be appreciated by a younger audience.

ARC REVIEW: what the woods took by courtney gould 🥾 a young adult horror novel following a group of troubled teens in a wilderness therapy program who find themselves facing monsters in a forest eager to take their place.

WHAT TO EXPECT:
🏕️ lurking monsters
✨ sapphic romance
🪵 wilderness behavioral therapy
🌙 troubled group of characters
👻 paranormal elements

this was such an interesting young adult novel because you can take it at face value as a horror survival novel or you can look into the trauma of everything. although you have to suspend your belief just a bit, I did enjoy the queer representation and organic friendships made along the way! (and don’t worry, it wasn't too scary in my opinion) 🌲

courtney gould has been an author on my radar since her debut and I’m happy I’ve finally gotten around to reading one of her young adult books! thank you st. martin’s press for the advanced copy 🎧 4 stars!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 4 stars

A group of wayward teens have been taken to the deep woods for wilderness therapy, but it doesn't take long for them to learn that not all is as it seems.

This book was a little slow to get going, but the character development and visual descriptions had me fully engrossed.

I would have liked some more background on the monsters, but I did enjoy what the author gave us through the interactions with one of them.

For fans of young adult horror, found family, and enemies-to-lovers sapphic romance.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Wednesday Books (St. Martin's Press) for this digital Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.

I went into this story totally blind, honestly it was the cover and the good average rating of 4.17 stars on goodreads that made me take the leap into reading this. This is also my first time hearing about this author too!

The beginning grabbed my attention right away. Previously this year I watched the Netflix shows "The Program" and "Camp Hell" and learned about these "schools" and "camps" that kidnap people in the middle of the night and bring "troubled teens" to these behavioral modification programs and my mind was blown that there are still programs that do this in the states?! What ?! Anyways, this is how the story begins with these teens and then the story turns much more sinister and supernatural as it progresses in the dark woods.

There were definitely times I couldn't connect with the characters and eye rolled at their thought processes.. but, I kept having to remind myself that this is YA , which I do struggle with for that reason. After almost every YA story , I always have the thought ... I think I would have enjoyed this more as a teen... So I guess that makes this perfect for the target audience!

I loved the deeper meaning behind the supernatural elements and seeing the teens open up and confront their past traumas. I could have done without the romance aspect, but love the LGBTQ rep!

One warning about this book though, is that the chapters are ridiculously LONG! I definitely could have done with shorter/quicker paced chapters for sure!

Well, this was way better than I expected!!

Having watched documentaries like “The Program” and shows like “Yellowjackets” I was pleasantly surprised that this one kind of mixed the two… and in a really creepy way!

This story follows Devin, who knows she is a problem for everyone, on a forced trip through the wilderness with several other “misfits” to face their demons.

What I think I loved most about this was the way the characters developed and changed throughout the story. I half expected them to stay the same and not get what it was they were supposed to get from the trip.

It’s a story of survival, but also of friendships and teamwork.

This is a great read!

When parents finally feel they have no place else to turn they move on to a last resort, Revive a wilderness camp that is a 50 day course through the woods where kids have to figure things out and hopefully come back home with their lives more in order than when they left. For 5 troubled teens they wake to find themselves being kidnapped from their beds with only a few belongings and taken to the forst and dropped off with two camp counselors.

Ollie and Devin come from the same area but very different backgrounds. Ollie feels like nothing he does will ever make his father happy and being sent here takes him away from his dying grandmother whom he fears he will never get to say goodbye too. Devin is a foster child who has been bounced all over to different families and is just angry, violence seems to be her go too emotion.

Aidan and Hannah both seem to good to be in a program like this. Hannah is the only one who came willingly to please her father. In her Fathers eyes one small screw up was enough to send her to a place like this. Aidan seems far too young to be here hes had some screw ups but hes just a child.

Then therse Sheridan, she just looks like one of those girls you immediately want to sock in the face and for Devin thats exactly what she wants to do.

Here in the woods they have to find a way to surivive with one another and make it through the 50 days to finally go home. One morning though they wake and the counselors are gone and thats when the problems really begin. There is something in these woods, it watches them and makes everything eerily silent. Animals aren't even seen or heard here in the woods and strange faces are seen amongst the leaves. The groups worst nightmares and most loved ones appear to them tempting and terrifying them.

How are they meant to survive in woods where only the counselors knew the paths too take, theres no food, no water and a group of kids that are likely to destroy one another but they will have to learn to cohabitate if they want to make it out of these woods in one piece or even as themselves.

#WhatTheWoodsTook by #CourtneyGould is a dark atmospheric story about shedding your old skin and past wounds to become something and someone new. Holding on to yourself and learning to let go all at once. It wasn't what I expected when I started reading and then suddenly it was and I loved every moment of it. Truly a page turner of a novel.

Thank you to #Netgalley for the chance to read #WhatTheWoodsTook in return for a fair and honest review.

Devin and several other teens are forced into a wilderness therapy program for at-risk youth. They originally think that completing the program is the most imminent hurdle, but things quickly go awry when their leaders go missing under questionable circumstances. They try to find a way to make it out, but it seems like something is working against them at every turn. What is in these woods, and will it let them leave?

I went into What the Woods Took fairly blind and wasn't fully sure where things were headed until about 30% in, but I read this in two sittings total. I actually woke up in the middle of the night and finished it because I needed closure. Wow, did this get creepy! I'd definitely recommend this to YA horror fans.

Thanks to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for an eARC of this book for an honest review.

What the Woods Took had me at the edge of my seat and had me second guessing if everyone in the book was a mimic. Devin is such a strong and fierce character with her original sidekick being Ollie, and her rival being Sheridan(at first). I gave this book 4 stars. I thought it was an incredible and interesting book and the scariness of the monsters was just enough to keep me reading without scaring me off. Hannah was a shocker in this books but I loved the way her charachter played a deeper meaning in the book. Each of the kids grew within their journey even if it was from a point of fear and the need for survival. A great book overall.

This is the third “wilderness therapy gone wrong” book I’ve read this year (the others being Wilderness Reform by Matt and Harrison Query and Cuckoo by Gretchen Felker-Martin), and while I’m a fan of this horror sub-genre, What the Woods Took was fine when the other two books were both better than fine (or, in the case of Cuckoo, mind-blowing).

Courtney Gould has a great storytelling style, and I’ve enjoyed her past books. I love her ability to smudge the horizon line between mundane and supernatural without making it seem like the monstrous aspect of her books would be utterly insane. It’s all too easy to imagine something ancient and unknowable living in the larger forests of the Pacific Northwest, with their huge trees and soaring mountain peaks. People enter these forests all the time and disappear, or come out completely changed.

A large part of my issue with this book is that the story didn’t seem to have a central theme or message that stood out to me, and in a horror novel that’s not a good thing. I imagine the main point that the book was trying to make was that trauma is something you always carry with you and only you can do the work to shift how you carry it, but even that feels nebulous to me. By the time I got toward the end of this book I felt like I had invested all of this time reading the book and there was no real payoff.

It was interesting and had a great premise, but not the intrigue or charisma of its contemporaries in the genre.

I was provided a copy of this title by the publisher and author via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. All reviews rated three stars or lower will not appear on my social media. Thank you.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and review this book.

What starts as an already unsettling commentary on the abuse that marginalized teens face in so called "wilderness therapy" programs quickly turns even more sinister. Having already been taken from their homes in the middle of the night as many victims of the troubled teen industry are, this group of teens are already primed to view the miles of hiking and forced bonding activities they are being subjected to uncharitably. As they get deeper into the woods, the tension within the group only increases as they begin to experience things they can't explain. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that the resulting surreal horror and subsequent banding together of the teens in the program makes for an extremely compelling story.

Overall I really enjoyed this book! It is extremely atmospheric and unsettling. If you like surreal horror or internet creepypastas this book is definitely for you. I think fans of unreliable narrators might like this one too, not necessarily because the individual perspectives are intentionally misleading but because the characters cannot trust their own senses.

A group of kids, considered delinquent, find themselves at a wilderness camp. They’re sent there by their families as a way to try to straighten them. The group has two young adults as camp coaches. Then really weird stuff starts happening. The book has a paranormal side and I usually can’t stand that stuff, but this one didn’t bother me at all. Great pace and the audio was also good!

You ever go out into nature to get rid of your demons but end up finding more?

This was a fantastic wilderness horror! A bunch of delinquent teens get taken away to wilderness therapy where they are going to spend the next 50 days roughing it in the woods and fending for themselves. Of course, they find a lot more in the woods than friendship and critical thinking skills.

I loved the idea that we never knew who was who in this book, an extra layer of creepy to an already unsettling concept. This is a story of survival and trust at its core and I could hardly put it down! The characters are all super engaging and the plot moved so quickly!

Courtney Gould never misses. I always enjoy her books. This one kept me up all night.
This was a 10/10, I need this made into a movie asap.

Thank you Wednesday Books for the ARC and Macmillan audio for the complementary audiobook.

What the Woods Took is horror that reaches you in many ways. The "troubled" teens in the this very problematic wilderness therapy program are simultaneously fighting their trauma and in real life monsters. To survive they have to face their own demons. The atmosphere of the book is creepy and pulls you in. Devin, Sheridan and the other characters are well-developed and grow in their own ways throughout the books. Their stories were hard to read at times but I found myself rooting for them all to survive and thrive.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This was a dark, creepy and intense YA book. It grabbed me right from the very beginning and held me until the end. I thought the character development was great and I liked all the different personalities and individual stories of the teens and how they ended up in this wilderness program. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced reader’s copy.

I can definitely say I wasn’t expecting this book to take a paranormal turn.

Sometimes, it was really hard to get past how hard everyone was pushing each other away. But they’re all going through things in their lives, and it’s completely normal. Gould writes unlikable characters so well. It’s what keeps you reading the book.

I liked the alternating perspectives between Ollie and Devin. Though I find it odd, we had an update with Ollie and his dad, and one with Sheridan and her parents. But not one with Devin and her foster parents. I would have liked to have seen how that worked out.

While this program was on the milder end of the spectrum of how devastating these camps can get, it’s good to draw attention to just how traumatizing these programs are. Gould wrapped it up into an exciting story that’s hard to put down.

One thing that stands out to me about Courtney Gould’s storytelling is that she does that adolescent transition into adulthood journey so well. I saw it first in The Dead and the Dark, and I see it now with her latest work, What the Woods Took.
With Devin, we are not met with a teenager who lacks responsibility and must learn the burden of wielding it, but rather a psychology that has been shaped by mistrust and total self-reliance, to the point where it becomes self-centred and self-destructive. As with every character in this book there is a distinct theming around hyper-focus—both on internal and external factors—and the necessity to communicate your feelings and fears before they destroy your ability to connect with others.
Since this is a horror novel, the catalyst for those lessons is so much more exaggerated and the timelines of their retention far quicker than they would be organically. This combined with the isolation of their environment forces all the characters to recognize their own limitations when they remain withdrawn from one another.
All of this complex character interaction prevents what could have been a very afterschool special message—That trust, friendship, and teamwork are important—from feeling corny or juvenile.
Overall, I really liked this book. It was creepy, engaging, the characters were diverse and interesting, and it also portrayed that diversity in a way that didn’t feel like it was tacking on labels. There was inference as opposed to someone outright discussing their sexuality or mental disorders right off the bat. I appreciated that, and it made the characters feel so much more real as a result.
I would 100% recommend this if you’re on the hunt for a diverse horror with a psychological element.

Title: What the Woods Took
Author:  Courtney Gould    
Genre: YA   
Rating:  4 out of 5

Devin Green wakes in the middle of the night to find two men in her bedroom. No stranger to a fight, she calls to her foster parents for help, but it soon becomes clear this is a planned abduction—one everyone but Devin signed up for. She’s shoved in a van and driven deep into the Idaho woods, where she’s dropped off with a cohort of equally confused teens. Finally, two camp counselors inform them that they've all been enrolled in an experimental therapy program. If the campers can learn to change their self-destructive ways—and survive a fifty-days hike through the wilderness—they’ll come out the other side as better versions of themselves. Or so the counselors say.

Devin is immediately determined to escape. She’s also determined to ignore Sheridan, the cruel-mouthed, lavender-haired bully who mocks every group exercise. But there’s something strange about these woods—inhuman faces appearing between the trees, visions of people who shouldn't be there flashing in the leaves—and when the campers wake up to find both counselors missing, therapy becomes the least of their problems. Stranded and left to fend for themselves, the teens quickly realize they’ll have to trust each other if they want to survive. But what lies in the woods may not be as dangerous as what the campers are hiding from each other—and if the monsters have their way, no one will leave the woods alive.

There’s a solid level of creepiness going on here. Like, I won’t be walking in the woods with my overactive imagination anytime soon. Solid writing and descriptions, and I enjoyed the relationships between the characters, who had all just met, so the growing camaraderie and trust was done well. Devin was a bit too…pushy and brash for me, but I did enjoy this read and thought the secondary characters were great.

Courtney Gould lives in Salem, Oregon. What the Woods Took is her newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of St. Martin’s Press in exchange for an honest review.)

(Blog link live 12/4).

4.5 Stars

This book sucked me right in and was gripping that I couldn’t stop reading, despite the horrific circumstances playing out in the story.

I love a good “lost in the woods” trope and throwing in “troubled teens” who have been sent to YET ANOTHER toxic “wilderness program” made it exceptional and multidimensional. This reference might show my age, but this gave me all the nostalgic feels that Higher Ground did (it’s a teen show from the early 00s that had a similar vibe, just not the horror).

How Courtney wrote this book really has you feeling like you are slipping into madness with the characters because the reality of their situation CANNOT BE REAL….RIGHT? Except it is, and it’s terrifying and paranormal and honestly, will make me think twice before I go into the woods.

If you want a horror book full of unsettling moments that will fly by, look no farther. It had incredible depth to the character storylines and genuinely tackled abuse, PTSD, depression and anxiety in such authentic ways.

5 stars
——————

I haven’t been able to get this book out of my head since I finished it. Amazing doesn’t even cover this one.

The plot of this book is unique and well executed. Playing into real life experiences and activities, this book spins these ideas around and turns them into a horror story I never saw coming. I loved the idea of five teens surviving the woods with something out to get them. The suspense was really well written. The setting was immaculate, completely atmospheric. One thing I always love about Courtney Gould’s writing is how engrossing it is. I felt like I was in that forest, surviving with Devon and Ollie. I never expected the twist until it happened, but you can tie everything back through the story and wonder why you didn’t see it coming. It was really well written in that way. I loved the entirety of the plot and the setting really enhanced it.

I loved the use of dual POV in this. It helped see the story from dual perspectives of two very different characters. Devon and Ollie are perfect contrasts to each other. I loved the amount of time put into the side characters, too. Each one has depth, despite playing small parts in the overall story. I originally thought I would enjoy seeing Sheridan’s POV, too, but I like that her’s wasn’t included because it would have been too much. Overall, I’m really impressed with the depth and growth of these characters.

Emotional, tense, scary, claustrophobic.

Another knock out of the park by Courtney Gould! I wish I could erase this book from my memory just to read it again for the first time.