My rating: DNF

I stopped reading Girl in the Creek at the halfway point, I wanted to drop it closer to the 20% mark but I was confident things would improve. I was wrong.

As others have mentioned, I enjoyed reading chapters told from the Strangeness's perspective—the opening chapter is just a one so I thought I was in for a real atmospheric treat—but these chapters (at least in the first half of the book) are few and far between, so instead you'll mostly be left in the hands of a horny vegetarian who drools over girls and hummus like an edgy high schooler.

Maybe this book would be a better fit for a younger audience (new adult)? Or perhaps someone that is looking for one of those brain-off kind of reads? Oh, I got it! Thriller readers in general—it won't have the high stakes or suspense you're probably used to but a mystery will be afoot and the writing will be straightforward.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire for providing me an e-ARC of this title.*

Girl in the Creek is What Moves the Dead’s grimier, spore-slick cousin—packed with rottagecore vibes, body horror, and a sentient mushroom colony that literally gets a voice. Told through multiple POVs (including the fungus itself), this horror-meets-thriller is both deeply unsettling and surprisingly fun.

Set in the misty forests of Oregon, the story blends missing girls, small-town secrets, and slow-creep ecological horror into a fast-paced mystery that’s easy to devour. While the plot follows a fairly straightforward path and the twists aren't groundbreaking, the eerie atmosphere, gruesome imagery, and organic tension more than make up for it.

Bonus points for centering the stories of girls of color, giving weight to real-world injustices within a speculative framework. And the ending? Gut punch. Perfect.

If you’re a fan of sporror, shady towns, mossy woods, and quick reads that will make you rethink your dinner plans, Girl in the Creek belongs in your TBR pile.

It took me a little bit to get used to the writing and fully dive into this one, but I ended up reading it in just a couple sittings.

This is was my first taste of fungal horror and it was a ton of fun. Weird, creepy, and a little chaotic.

This book captivated me from the very first page. The writing is beautiful, almost poetic. The author has a way of painting scenes so vividly, it felt like I was living inside the story. While body horror isn’t usually a genre I gravitate to, this one had me hooked. Creepy, captivating, and absolutely impossible to look away from. I'll admit, juggling six characters got a little confusing at times (my brain needed a chart), but it didn’t take away from the ride. And what a ride it was. I genuinely had no idea where the plot was headed, and that unpredictability made it all the more thrilling.
If you're looking for something unsettling, beautifully written, and just a little off-kilter… this one might be your next obsession

Erin works for the Oregon Traveler and takes a job covering Faraday, Oregon as a new tourist hot spot when really she is going to cover their missing people problem. Erin has a very personal interest in the story and the area since this is where her brother went missing a few years ago. As Erin searches for answers as to whether the missing are dead or alive, she soon figures out they might be something in between.

If you like eco horror, I think you will like this story, It is a very atmospheric book and the author does a great job describing the lush green forests of the area and even the brutal, gory scene left by poachers. The story felt very claustrophobic and had a few turns I was not expecting. There were a few chapters that felt a bit rushed and I was looking for more.

In this book we follow Erin, she's a freelance writer who is trying to uncover the mysterious disappearance of several people including her brother Bryan in the hiking trails of Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon. She goes there to uncover what truly happens to the people who've gone missing, but what she finds is something much more sinister than she expected. I really enjoyed this book and also the group of characters that joined Erin on this trip, among them is her friend Hari who is helping her cover the story. I definitely recommend this one if you like nature horror, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite sub-genres of horror lately. This is the first thing I've read by this author, I'm intrigued and would like to check out more of their work.


Thank you to NetGalley and Tor/Forge for this ARC in return for an honest review.

From the moment I grabbed this book it took a hold on me. Absolute sporror wonderland and savagely intense. Loved every minute of the intensity. Great character development. An overall atmospheric treat

MY RATING: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED


REVIEW: Girl in the Creek, Wendy N. Wagner’s new ecohorror novel from Tor Nightfire, manages to be claustrophobic and expansive at the same time, masterfully using beautiful descriptions of the Mount Hood region of the Pacific Northwest to make the reader feel trapped with the main character as things spiral out of control.

Travel reporter Erin comes to the small former mining town of Faraday with four friends (podcaster Hari, tech-savvy Matt, shelter for endangered women runner Kaylee, and Kaylee’s sister Madison) ostensibly to write an article about Faraday’s charm and eco-tourist-friendly attitude. She is really there to investigate a spate of missing persons cases, both for a possible book and episode of Hari’s podcast and to find emotional closure for the disappearance of her brother Bryan, which has been ruled by local police as a suicide with no body found. Erin and her gang immediately encounter locals both nice (hiking enthusiast Jared, river tour guide Dahlia), not nice (the Steadman brothers) and indeterminate (landlord Olivia Vanderpoel, deputy sheriff Duvall, local mushroom expert Ray). In the hands of some writers, juggling this many characters would be unwieldy at best, or they would mostly be played at stereotype level, filling their narrative roles without much depth. But Wagner has a wonderful knack for imbuing characters with depth in just a handful of sentences, forcing the reader to see beyond the “types” and come to care about them, which I happen to thin is a key component of effective horror fiction. I love slasher films as much as the next horror aficionado, but I never feel emotionally connected to most of the victims in such a film. Wagner made me care, so almost every death (and there are deaths, oh boy are there deaths) has emotional impact, even the ones that occur chronologically before the events of the book.

Wagner is also adept at establishing and maintaining mood. Despite being set largely outdoors, there is a pervading sense of claustrophobia that anyone who has ever been lost in the woods or crawling through a cave or stumbled through a dark house will recognize. Hours after finishing the book I still can’t quite shake the feeling. There is an undercurrent of looming danger that permeates every page and grows more distinct and precise as the threat becomes more apparent to the characters.

I have a love/hate relationship with mushrooms. Seen out in the wild, I find their variety of shapes and colors fascinating (sometimes morbidly so) and often can’t look away from them. But I also have a strict “no fungus” rule when it comes to what I eat (don’t bother trying to convince me otherwise. It’s been attempted. It won’t work). Wagner perfectly captured everything that fascinates me about wild fungi while also increasing my commitment to never eating any … thus perhaps proving why I would be one of the first victims if I existed in this book (or in any other fungi-based horror or SF story). I shall be looking even more askance at mushrooms, mycelium, mold, and mildew going forward.

I have not yet read any of the other recently released entries in what seems to be a trend of fungi-based horror, but I can highly recommend Girl in the Creek, Wendy N. Wagner’s entry into the genre.

I thoroughly enjoyed this read! I am not familiar with Wendy Wagner's work, but this novel kept me on my toes and bracing for any little thing. I love a good fungal horror and this really hit the spot.

Thank you to NetGalley, Wendy N. Wagner, and Tor Publishing Group for a copy of this book.

Content Warnings: Animal Death, Animal Abuse, Body Horror, Mention of Suicide, Mention of Sexual Assault, Death, Injuries, Gore, Blood, Murder, Stalking, and Mind Control/Hive Mind.

Wendy N. Wagner’s “Girl in the Creek” was an interesting read. I have to be honest, I was not really a fan of it in the first half. It was setting up to be an average horror piece, creating characters to be slaughtered later. However, around the halfway point, “Girl” really started to pick up.

The story focuses on Erin and her trip to a small town with big secrets. There, she meets with a gaggle of fellow young people to hike and investigate recent disappearances–including the disappearance of her brother, Bryan. As time goes on, an entity called the Strangeness begins to spread itself throughout the neighboring forest, searching for the perfect someone to carry out its mission.

I think the main issue I have with the book, looking back on it now, is that there were far too many characters. Many of them were not explored or fleshed out; many of them just felt like they were there for plot devices and nothing else. Another issue I had was with the dialogue. It felt stilted at times, with characters saying things that felt almost out of left field. Two people could be having a pleasant conversation when one of them suddenly says something rude or angry, but that little nugget of emotion is skipped over. Why include moments like that, which feel jarring and unreal, if it isn’t going to be explored?

“Girl in the Creek” is a good read once you get through the first half. I would recommend it only if you have nothing else to read at present, or if you are really weirded out by mushrooms. At least “Girl” can give you a reason to be anti-fungus.

*Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the e-ARC! Additional thanks to LibroFM for the ALC! All opinions are my own.*

I unfortunately did not love this one :( It has such a gorgeous cover and the premise sounded directly up my alley but it didn't execute the way I'd have liked.

To start, we are met almost immediately and all at once with a whole lot of characters. One second, it's Erin exploring this sleepy town. The next, we're juggling like six to eight brand new characters and they all have names and connections to the story/each other all at the same time and they are here to STAY so you best get acquainted (I never fully did, honestly). There's also a small romance subplot that like immediately gets introduced, then forgotten, then remembered again at the end that was both unnecessary and weird. Secondly, this plot gets real muddled just as quickly. There's a lot of moving parts. A few of the characters have their own agendas for being in this town and exploring these creepy ass woods, seldom do they actually intertwine, but it seems the author was trying pretty hard to make them do so anyway. Which made everything so confusing. At one point towards the end we were entertaining the idea that the fungus was aliens??? or something??? and I'm honestly unclear as to whether or not we clarified if that was the actual case or not??? I'll be very real, I couldn't explain this plot to you with any real certainty if I tried, aside from the missing persons portion. It's so much and so all over the place. I'm extremely disappointed in this one, unfortunately. :(

4.5/5 stars

Thank you to Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for letting me have an eARC of this one!

This was very fast paced and I found it really enjoyable. I love climate sci-fi especially when there's horror elements added to it! I'm also one of those people who falls directly into the recommended bubble of VanderMeer and Kingfisher enjoyers for this one.

I adored this so much, my reading notes are an absolute mess of me yelling like I'm watching a slasher movie. There's so much of this book that the reader doesn't really begin to understand until you hit the last 20-30% of this one and that's incredibly well done.

I do really need to call some attention to the prose of this book though, Wendy Wagner has done an absolutely incredible job at making something horrifying sound beautiful and it's a talent that I'm kind of scared of but also admire a little bit. Part of me almost doesn't want to say more and just tell people if it sounds interesting to pick it up for themselves and enjoy the ride! I had several guesses while reading this about the direction it was going to go in and genuinely I was flat out WRONG about all of them. I will leave my review with the content warnings that there is a truly massive amount of body horror in this book, a fair amount of gore too but it's overshadowed by the body horror that makes the reader go "wait WHAT???"

Overall, this was fine. The combo of fungus horror and Pacific Northwest setting definitely gives it an X-Files vibe. The fungus horror was really well done-I liked the POV chapters. There were too many characters and they weren't given much depth so once the mystery plot really kicked in it was difficult to remember who was who and how they might be significant. I also wished the author had played with red herrings a bit more with certain characters. Instead, the character I figured from the beginning was going to be important did turn out to be what I thought so the mystery was overall pretty predictable. Despite this, I did find the ending satisfying.

I received a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Do you like:
Body horror?
Eco horror?
Spores?
Great imagery?

Erin Harper is a freelance writer and amateur investigator. Her brother went missing five years ago and she can't move on. Ending up in Faraday, Oregon- the place her brother was last seen- brings up all the emotions she worked hard to repress. A series of disappearances of young women and the remarkable reappearance of one woman completely changes everything for Erin. Is it a serial killer? A disease? Something else?

The good: The body horror and descriptions in Girl in the Creek are phenomenal. Wagner has such a way with words it really felt like I was reading a movie. The descriptions of a fox's POV were entrancing to read. For anyone looking to get into eco horror specifically, I would recommend this as a good jumping off point. The ending? Gutted.

The okay: Unfortunately, even with the beautiful descriptions it took me a while to actually get into Girl in the Creek. I usually read books under 300 pages in a day or two. It took me over a week to read this. Some scenes felt drawn out and connections were hard to make. I definitely will give this another read through later on.

The bad: There wasn't anything bad actually.

A new fungal-horror novel set in the Clackamas-Mount Hood area. The opening paragraphs of this rather busy horror story start out with great promise and some beautifully esoteric and dark prose setting up the location of the dark, saturated green forests where the local wildlife is behaving rather peculiarly, an exotic Strangeness is creeping, people keep disappearing into the woods and/or getting zombified, and there may be a serial killer at large…

There’s a lot happening here with all that and I think it’s all maybe too much. I could have done without the serial killer subplot and would have probably enjoyed this more if it had just stuck to the mysterious spreading corruption. There is some really beautiful writing, but when the story moves to the (rather large) group of friends and their various exploits I kinda got bored. I didn’t really connect with any of the (human) characters – they just weren’t that interesting to me.

There’s a lot of movement in the plot so this would probably appeal to those looking for more of a straightforward action-y horror. Not a bad story, it just didn’t really grab a strong hold of me.

My thanks to Netgalley and TOR Nightfire for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Girl in the Creek is a chilling descent into the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest, where the line between natural and unnatural blurs and secrets fester just beneath the surface.

When Erin sets out to uncover what really happened to her brother Bryan—missing for five years without a trace—she expects grief, silence, maybe closure. What she finds instead is a dead woman in a creek, a trail of vanishings no one wants to investigate, and a growing sense that the woods around Mt. Hood are not just hiding something—they're watching.

As Erin digs deeper into a mystery others are desperate to forget, she’s pulled into a terrifying web of corruption, folklore, and something older than the trees themselves. Something that doesn't want her to leave.

Tense, atmospheric, and laced with creeping dread, Girl in the Creek is a haunting exploration of what we’re willing to uncover…and what should have stayed buried.

Environmental horror is a new sub genre I've been reading more of lately. This book fungal horror reminded me of The Last Of Us. Overall while I wasn't hooked 100% I did enjoy the book and premise. I would totally recommend this for people who are looking for lighter horror and thriller books.

Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner is an eco-horror thriller set in Oregon's Mt. Hood National Forest, where journalist Erin Harper investigates mysterious disappearances—primarily of women of color—while researching a travel piece. The novel shines in its vividly atmospheric setting and fungal-based horror, but falters with bland, interchangeable characters and a major reveal spoiled in the prologue. Though lacking suspense and character clarity, fans of “sporror” and X-Files-style horror may still enjoy its eerie wilderness and slow-creeping dread.

Maybe 3.5

Audio was really good and I loved the body horror components. It read a bit YA / scooby doo and I didn't connect with the large cast of characters but it's a quick and interesting read - last 25% really kicked into gear

The strangeness was the best part. But I'm not sure it's enough to make up for the disjointed plot and characters that felt surface level until the very end. If that started earlier maybe this could be a 4, but the trope of "group of friends exploring abandoned places in the middle of the night" leads to a lot of cliches.

I feel like I just got off a roller coaster: After a quick introductory climb, Wendy Wagner took me on a screaming thrill ride that left me gasping for breath and discombobulated by the end, muttering “wtf” under my breath.

The Girl in the Creek follows Erin Harper as she searches for her missing brother in the old mining town of Faraday, a place full of hidden hiking trails, abandoned mines, and watchful eyes. A creeping Strangeness has infiltrated the local flora and fauna…and people are vanishing without a trace.

This book is a fast-paced environmental horror reminiscent of Jeff VanderMeer. Check it out if you like immersive and otherworldly atmospheres sure to give you weird dreams! And props to the narrator, Jennifer Pickens, for adding to the heavy tension throughout.

Thank you to NetGalley, Tor, and Macmillan Audio for advanced digital and audio copies of this book in exchange for an honest review.