I have fallen in love with fungi dark fiction. And Girl in the Creek hit all the marks. Dark and mysterious, dual perspective, one being an unreliable, eerie, mystical creature, this story keeps you guessing. If you want fungi horror, this is a must-read.

This book had some of the best plant and body horror that I've ever read. The author did such a great job with the descriptions so I could actually picture everything that was happening. And wow, things got gory and disgusting and I loved every minute of it. I even loved the beginning before all of the craziness started with just the character interactions and the settings. I'm very excited to read more by this author.

For a short book, the story really dragged, the first half started very slow and everything significant was stuffed into the second half. There were so many characters crammed in that I felt like I didn’t get the chance to know or care about any of them. Some of the writing style put me off as well. Water bottles were referred to by their brand names, the word “rizz” was used as an unironic descriptor, and “mansplained” was used as a dialogue tag. The concept of this book is really cool but the plot just didn’t deliver.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor for the advance copy.

🌿GIRL IN THE CREEK🌿 by @wendy.n.wagner is an atmospheric thriller starting with the first line of "The body lay at the very limit of daylight." Thank you to the author, @netgalley and the publisher, @tornightfire for the e and audio-ARCs.

🌊🌊🌊

Erin's brother dissapeared in the town of Faraday, Oregon years ago. Now, as a journalist for the Oregon Traveler, Erin convinces her boss that Faraday will be the next hot vacation locale in Oregon so she can return to look for clues. After arriving, Erin notices all kinds of fliers for missing people in the area and she starts to worry that her brother's dissapearance was not isolated.

This book employs two storylines that are barrelling toward collision. I found this sporror story eerie, atmospheric, strange and creepy. There is a lot of body horror, transformation and infection. I definitely enjoyed the book but also wanted a little more backstory as to why what was happening was happening.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

This was an alright book with an alright concept. I was pretty bored until about 50% through, when there was more cosmic horror/weird fungus action. A couple of things that I think contributed to that slog in the beginning: 1) too many characters to focus on. I could not for the life of me keep all of these folks straight in my head because there were too many of them. It led to me not caring about what happened to most of them, with the exception of Erin. 2) Plot twists involving certain characters were too easy to predict. It was so easy to tell who the real problem was. I wish less hints were thrown at that character and more in interesting directions. 3) Too many different motives to be in the town led to too many different things going on. You have Erin who's trying to find her brother under the guise of writing a vacation piece, her work colleague who is writing the vacation piece with her, and the podcast crew who want to investigate the missing people but do a shit job of that. So, with all these differing motives, the crew were all doing different things and it felt disjointed.

The writing style was good, particularly in the more gruesome fungus-y bits. I wish there was more of that. Those are the passages that will stick with me, but there were unfortunately not quite enough of them to keep my interest.

Unfortunately I found the premise of this book to be more interesting than the execution of this book. The characters never really connected for me and it wasn't as spooky as I wanted it to be.

A unique spin on environmental horror combined with a murder mystery. Once I started listening to this one, I couldn’t stop. The story begins with a creepy animal POV, then shifts to the main character, Erin. Erin is a journalist using the cover of writing a holiday destination article to dig into her brother’s disappearance. When she arrives in town, she discovers there are multiple missing people and finds herself pulled into a terrifying search for answers, and boy, does she find more than she bargained for.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.


This book just gets Oregon and its old logging towns. I live in one of those old logging towns, and there is a sentence early in the book that really just gets it, "Erin had gotten an eye for that certain style of decay-the roofs with tarps covering rotten spots, the siding with moss chinking the gaps, the driveways with cars sitting on blocks or being swallowed up by blackberry vines." This is the way it is in every old and forgotten logging town in Oregon. This was also an excellent body horror book. Starts slow but really picks up about a third in.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for an early copy in exchange for a review. As you can see, this one took me a long time to try and finish. I kept picking it back up but it was a struggle. I even tried to get an audio copy just to see if maybe that would help but alas, no luck.

This book has quite the cast, there are a LOT of characters and it can be really easy to get things mixed up... that along with the malevolent forces in the forest, and it was just too much almost. There were too many things going on. It came off very YA to me as the cast seems like teenagers, I honestly cannot recall their ages but the use of words like "rizz" makes me thing pretty young. I am not against that persay but that is just the vibe.

So by 60% I just found it feeling like a chore and I decided to move on. I have been stuck on this one and it has made my TBR pile up behind it. It is one that I felt I could not read anything alongside because it took so much to try and keep up.

Thank you again for the early copy and I wish this worked better for me! On to the next one.

This book had a lot of potential from the initial introduction: the cover art: phenomenal. The premise: spooky spore-related horror. Once I got into the actual book, however, things took a turn.

We are introduced to Erin, our main protagonist (this is key because the way that this was written, at times Erin just felt like she was along for the ride instead of a lead) is searching for her brother, Bryan, who had gone missing in the Clackamas Forest years prior. While we join her on her journey to possibly find answers to long-asked questions, we meet a group of people that, in original horror movie/book fashion, I like to think of as our "expendables" group or B-movie fodder. I in no way mean this to be a downside to the book, as we all know B-movie deaths to be a masterfully good time, but when everyone kept dropping one after the other, it felt tiring. A lot of this was due to the fact, in my opinion, we were meant to feel some form of connection to these people, and I don't think it was conveyed enough for us to properly do so.

We meet sisters Kayla and Madison, Jordan, and a few others who basically become the vehicles for the body horror and death that begins to happen once they run into a murdered young girl, Elena, who was taken over by a fungus-like organism. Honestly, the description of this thing felt more reminiscent of The Thing, an alien and not of this planet, than earthlier rot-related. I think if The Thing is your vibe, you'll definitely enjoy this book.

That being said, The Strangeness is what kept me reading this book. The author clearly has beautiful writing and is talented, and it shines the brightest when reading this POV. It was atmospheric, creepy, and rotting with delicious visuals. While the ending was expected, I did enjoy the way Wagner closed out this horror novel with a feeling of dread in the unknown.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor Nightfire for this advanced reader copy!

As a side note, there were a few pages with errors"
Pg 69 in the second paragraph feet was spelled "feett"
Pg 75 Elena Lopez's name was wrong in Sheriff Duvall's speech near the bottom of the page.
Pg 173 the word "scrunched" was missed the s and was made crunched.

I just read The Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner. Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for the advanced copy.

Erin Harper's brother killed himself five years ago. Except she's never really believed it. So when the opportunity to travel to his last known location comes up for work, she pushes hard for it. The small town of Farrady is nestled in the foothills of Mt Hood. It has it's charm, a maybe up-and-coming tourist destination, and a slate of missing persons. Erin's friends agree to come along for the ride for a true crime podcast examining the missing women in the area. They join up with some local outdoorsy types, and find way more than they bargained for.

I saw a lot of reviews that compare this to the Southern Reach Trilogy. That seems like a pretty fair comparison, but I think this book lacks some of the grandness of Annihilation. There are two POVs in this book-- Erin's and the Strangeness. While initially creating a lot of mystery, towards the middle of the book it becomes a little muddled. I love the idea of spores and collective consciousness, but there are a lot of missing pieces that I wish we got to see. I did love the cold brutality of the Strangeness, which echoed the cold brutality of nature, and it had some interesting undercurrents about climate change and human impacts on the environment; it just never felt like it really stuck to a lane. Oh yeah and there's a serial killer narrative that gets both solved and wrapped up in a wholly unsatisfying way. All in all I think it was a very enjoyable read, but I wish it had just done more. Very cool idea, mostly good execution, just left me a little wanting.

Podcast: Science fiction and horror author & editor Wendy N. Wagner adds hungry fungi to the long list of creepy ways to be wary in the woods in Girl in the Creek. Wendy talks about the different elements from her hobbies and interests in the outdoors that played a part of her creating this eco-horror tale, and how the mushrooms kept pushing their way into the story.

Listen: https://www.writersafterdark.com/writers-after-dark-149/

Erin Harper's brother Brian has been missing for five years. He vanished during a solo hiking trip in the Pacific Northwest. Erin lands an assignment to do a puff piece on the town where he vanished from so she takes the opportunity to do a little sleuthing. But why are women going missing? And who is the girl in the creek?

I wanted to love “Girl in the Creek”, I really did. It wasn't unsettling enough to be creepy, and it definitely wasn't scary enough for me to read only in daytime. There's elements of body horror, alien invasion, and societal horror but none of it really scared me. The story never really seemed to get cohesive enough for me to care about any of the characters and it kind of felt that it needed to be about a third longer to really work. (Look, I almost never say that a book should be longer, but here we are.)

I received an ARC copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I'm a bit on the fence with this one, so I’ll break it into two parts (minor spoilers ahead):

What didn’t work for me:
The chapters from the virus’s or animals’ perspectives felt out of place. They either needed more depth and clarity or could’ve been left out entirely. The beginning also dragged a bit and it felt like there was room for more action or stronger story development early on.

What I did enjoy:
The concept of a parasitic virus (or fungus) taking over human hosts was fascinating and had so much potential. I was hoping for a The Last of Us vibe, and while it didn’t quite reach that level, the idea itself was compelling. The eerie, gothic writing style really set a creepy, atmospheric tone, and the story definitely picked up by the end with a fairly satisfying conclusion.

*Thank you to Wendy N. Wagner, Tor Publishing Group | Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for the digital copy. I am freely leaving my honest review.

firstly, thank you to the publisher for an arc!

3.5 stars — this was very reminiscent of the last of us and what moves the dead considering this was full of fungal body horror.

girl in the creek was full of uncomfortable descriptive body horror on humans and animal alike — and this confirms my gut instinct to never go camping/traipsing through the woods!!; the author also utilized female rage, which i really appreciated in the horror realm.

i also listened to the audio, and the narrator did a great job!

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of Girl in the Creek.

Unfortunately outside of the body horror, this was a total miss for me. I’d like to take a chance on the finished copy, because the writing in the ARC just fell so flat. I feel like the author was trying to mimic other popular writing styles, but to me it just seemed cheesy and choppy. I found it hard to follow along with anything that was happening because of how often we were bouncing from character to character. The characters were also very flat, with what seemed like no distinct characteristics.

I may give the author another chance in the future, but unfortunately Girl in the Creek just wasn’t for me.

No sporror book has ever succeeded in scaring me, and mushrooms are one of my worst fears.

With this one, I think there were too many characters involved, and so the events of the book lost their impact. Even with our limited POVS, everything felt too divided within Erin's head, and really, I just wanted to know more sooner about her missing brother. I did find the alternate POVs effective in how they enhanced the atmosphere of the wetland.

Truthfully, I was bored by this writing; it felt surface-level and bland. Wagner is trying to touch on several relevant topics with this story, but the attempts end up feeling rather clunky.

I loved how atmospheric and creepy this story was, especially as the action ramped up. The crew of friends, acquaintances and allies ends up on a whodunnit type of mystery, thinking that there is a regular serial killer on the loose when it is something much more interesting and terrifying. Fungal horror is a fantastic subgenre and this book stands at the top of it with What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. This is the perfect fast read for when you want to be afraid of the power of nature.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to @tornightfire for the ARC. All thoughts are my own.

TW/CW: Death by suicide (talk), alcoholism, drinking, grieving, gory scenes, blood, violence, racism, rape, torture

*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:
The Clackamas National Forest has always been a sanctuary for evil—human and alien. The shadows of looming trees and long-abandoned mines shelter poachers and serial killers alike. Then there’s the ruined hotel on the outskirts of picturesque small town Faraday, Oregon, nestled in the foothills of Mt. Hood. The one drowning in mushrooms and fungus not even the local expert can identify. Not to mention the stacks of missing persons cases. Freelance writer Erin Harper arrives in Faraday to find out what happened to her brother, whose disappearance in the forest has haunted her for years. But someone else has gone missing. And when Erin finds her in the creek, the girl vanishes again — this time from the morgue, and days later her fingerprints show up at a murder scene. Maybe it’s a serial killer, or maybe it’s the spores infecting the forest and those lost inside. Erin must find answers quickly, before anyone else goes missing. But she might be next…
Release Date: July 15th, 2025
Genre: Horror
Pages: 272
Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

What I Liked:
1. Writing style was good
2. Queer rep
3. Gory scenes
4. Love the cover
5. Mushroom horror
6. Jo Bob Briggs mention from the 90s

What I Didn't Like:
1. The parts where we got the wolves pov
2. Confusing parts at times
3. Book got boring half way through

Overall Thoughts:
{{Disclaimer: I write my review as I read}}
I thought Erin said she wasn't going to be eating mushrooms anytime soon and as soon as she leaves Olivia's she orders a pizza with mushrooms. I mean what gives Erin?

I could skip the wolf pov's. While I think the author wanted to put depth into the story I think it made the story feel weighed down and boring. Also the Creek girl pov too.

So this whole time Scott is alive and has been hiding out at this bakery and doing bad things. So weird that Olivia was so worried that she has been losing sleep but she had an idea he might be there but chose to not even look for him there. Why? For 24 years he has been missing and she never once went up there.

I keep wondering if Olivia is helping this whole thing of the missing girls. She's rich so she can pay the police off to not tell anybody what's going on. She's renting a room out of her house so people would be coming into her home and staying. Plus right now she gets Erin into the car by herself in a separate vehicle away from everyone else.

I kind of figured that Bryan was alive and working for this alien mushroom race of beings. Idea just feels generic after itself when they used the same idea with Scott being alive too and doing the same thing. I don't know.

Final Thoughts:
So yeah the problem I had with this book is that I thought it would be horror but it felt more like a thriller/mystery with some creepy things sprinkled in. There were times when the characters actions ran together and I found myself confused on who I was supposed to be following.

Erin isn't a very interesting character and dare I say that she is boring. We do a lot of back and forths all without feeling as though we are going anywhere. I so wanted more from her as a character but feel like the other characters around her did the heavy lifting at times for her.

At the end of the day I liked the body horror and the mushrooms taking over. It reminded me of that one episode of Hannibal where the killer turns the murdered women into a mushroom garden. Also I finished this and got a mushroom pizza.

Also also if you haven't seen Hannibal the TV show you really should watch it because it's fantastic and there is some out of this world body horror in it.

📚 ARC Review: Girl in the Creek
✍️ Author: Wendy N. Wagner
📅 Release Date: July 15th, 2025
🏷️ Genre: Horror
🩸 Scare Factor: 🩸.5 creepy but mild
⭐️ Star Rating: ⭐️ ⭐️ .75
📖 Book Overview
When Erin’s brother vanished in the forests near Mt. Hood, he became just another unsolved mystery—until she decides to find out what really happened. But after stumbling across a body in the woods, Erin is pulled into a chilling web of secrets, both human and otherworldly. Some truths are meant to stay buried… and someone will do anything to keep them that way.
✨ First Impressions
I picked this up because I was wanting to try a book out from a different genre. From the start, I was intrigued by the strangeness point of view and I was ready to find out more.
💘 What I Loved
This book nailed the “what the hell is going on in this town" and how is everyone not freaking out that all these people randomly go missing in this town. I was intrigued by the group of friends and how they worked together throughout the story.
😬 What Didn’t Work
I found it hard to keep up with everything going on. I felt that jumping to the strangeness pov and back was hard for me and all i kept thinking was what is this strangeness and what is it doing. I also found myself feeling bored part way through the book but did pick back up towards the end.
🖤 Final Thoughts
Overall, I found this book interesting but I think this just wasn’t the book for me.