Skip to main content

Member Reviews

The cover of this book definitely caught my eye and is a great blend of horror, mystery and thriller.

The Girl in the Creek is a slow-paced read about a town set in the woods in Oregon that Erin has traveled to in order to uncover the truth behind her brother's disappearance. In doing so, she discovers someone she wasn't expecting, The Strangeness, and eco-horrors.

I absolutely love botanical horror so this was a good read for me. It is also my first Wendy N. Wagner book, so I am now super curious about her other stuff!

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC audio book.

Was this review helpful?

3.5⭐️. Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner is a moody and atmospheric horror novel set in the haunting wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. The story leans heavily into setting and tone, painting Mt. Hood National Forest as a place filled with shadows, secrets, and an unsettling sense that the forest itself might be alive. Between long-abandoned mines, a decaying hotel covered in strange fungi, and a growing list of missing persons, the environment plays a strong role in building dread throughout the book.

The plot follows Erin Harper, a freelance writer searching for answers about her brother’s disappearance years earlier. What begins as a personal investigation soon pulls her into something much darker. After another girl goes missing—and reappears under bizarre circumstances—Erin becomes caught in a mystery that seems tied to the forest’s strange, possibly supernatural elements. The story gets even more interesting with short chapters written from the perspective of the fungal presence, giving a creepy voice to whatever might be hiding beneath the surface.

While the concept and atmosphere are strong, the execution falls just short of being fully satisfying. The plot moves in a fairly straight line and never quite delivers the twists or intensity that could have elevated the suspense. The characters are likable but somewhat underdeveloped, and their emotional arcs felt a little too light for the weight of the story.

Overall, while it was enjoyable, creative, and definitely eerie, it lacked the depth and complexity to make it a standout in the horror genre. Still, it’s a good choice for readers who enjoy quiet, nature-based horror and are looking for something atmospheric without being overly intense.

Was this review helpful?

I'm not sure how to rate this book fairly because I found myself a bit lost, confused, yet at the same time intrigued through the entire book. The cover and synopsis drew my interest, and the first couple of chapters set up what seemed to be a murder-mystery but quickly turned into an eco-horror, sporror(? spores horror) book. Which I don't mind at all, but the extra characters kind of bogged down the story as I found they didn't add much to it? The body horror description was the most interesting part of the book, and I kept hoping it would pick up and gel the storyline together more, but again, it fell short. I listened to this as an audiobook, and the narration was well done. The dialogue, on the other hand, was a bit cheesy.

I'll slot this one in the weird, eye-raising category, but not necessarily in a good way?

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

Was this review helpful?

Overall I enjoyed this, the audio narrator was great and the idea of the overall plot was interesting. However, some issues kept me from fully engaging. I am a big fan of forest rot horror and the gore elements of this were pretty great, but the way it all tied to together was lacking in addition to the characters being feeling a little shallow.

Straight away we're introduced to six characters in addition to the main character. I was excited, I love a large cast and a main character who has actual friends. I was soon to be disappointed because we were not really going to spend enough time with the characters to really care much about them. The only one I actually cared about wasn't even part of the initial party of six but Olivia the local woman of many hats and elderly lady. Honestly, she was a badass. But even the time we spent with her didn't really feel more than surface level. It was very hard to care when the action started happening because I didn't find the characters interesting or engaging.

The chapters from the perspective of the strangeness were also kind of one note. I could tell what Wagner was going for and kept waiting for the "oompf," for lack of a better word, to come through. At some point I got the idea that what I wanted was those chapters to be in a Greek chorus or first person and I couldn't let it go. So, that's on me.

My last little issue was that I felt Wagner was trying to do too much with the plots. There was a serial killer/kidnapper, a missing persons list, and "the strangeness" and they were connected but also not? It's hard to talk about without spoiling. But there were two separate story lines connected by a small thread and it didn't really come together in the right way for me to feel satisfied.

That being said, I really liked the atmosphere described and the creative take on mushroom horror was enjoyable. I loved the way the Oregon forest was described and the use of the small town vibes. I am still happy I read this, and will be reading more from the author. Unfortunately though, this book won't be in my top for the year.

Was this review helpful?

Erin, a journalist, has come to the sleepy town of Faraday, Oregon with a mission - investigate the town where her brother disappeared five years before. The town has its odd residents, but with a team of friends and locals behind her, Erin feels that she is finally following in the footsteps that her brother took just before he vanished. There is something strange about this place, though. Missing girls, hostile men, and a creeping dread haunt the town and Erin will need to face all the horrors - both human and not - before she can find what she came for.

This book was an extremely enjoyable, extremely gory ride. I have so many, many words to say about this book, but I will try to keep it as short and accessible as possible while I try to convince you that you should give this one a shot.

The cast of characters is big with six major characters to follow, but at no point does this group feel daunting. Erin and her friends are all given their moments, but at no point do they feel forced or intrusive to the plot. Things in the group flow, and the author very cleverly splits them up numerous times to keep the reader's brain from juggling all those characters for every scene. Still, each character feels complete in their own right, and the personalities are easy to tell apart. Even more minor characters - like the innkeeper-slash-ultra-rich-matriarch - feel like real members of a real community. Creating stakes like this is, I think, one of the strongest part of the story. As we all know, horror stories without likable characters are just slash-fests. Stories with characters you root for are where real horror begins.

The other strength of this book is the absolutely visceral descriptions of body horror that appear throughout the book. The overall premise of this story centers around something called "the Strangeness", which infects living things and assimilates them. Several chapters even come from the point of view of the Strangeness itself and offer a unique perspective to the mystery that our characters and the town at large are facing. The finer details are harrowing, and I will absolutely not be discussing them here because you deserve to read them in all their glory yourself. Just believe me when I say that many of the scenes had me curled in a disgusted ball on my couch, utter unable to look away from the page.

Pacing of the book is a tad slow in the first half with Erin & co. doing a lot of investigating and finding a whole lot of spooky clues. The assorted adventures that the crew take in the beginning are important to the build-up of the book, and there is always a pervasive sense of dread hanging over the expeditions (even those just to the local coffee shop). But the true brilliance of the novel really starts to set in as questions begin to be answered and bodies start to drop.

Lovers of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy and Carpenter's The Thing, prepare to be absolutely devoured by this book and its denizens. If any story could be described as "infectious", it's this.

Was this review helpful?

The girl in the creek is a riveting story of a girl who goes to a small town in Oregon. On her business trip weird things start to happen. she starts to think about her brother who went missing a few years. This book kept me on my toes though it was slow in a few parts. with its creepy atmosphere you are sure to get your horror fix.

Was this review helpful?

3.5 stars rounded up

I don’t know what’s in the literary water lately, but I’ve read at least ten books this year featuring fungi as the antagonist. Girl in the Creek is one of the more memorable takes. While the fungal horror element sets the tone, this story offers so much more, blending eerie body horror with serial killer tension and psychological thriller vibes.

Wagner’s prose is undeniably beautiful. The writing is lyrical yet razor sharp, and she brings a literary elegance to the grotesque in a way that feels both unsettling and compelling. The body horror scenes are vivid and visceral without feeling gratuitous, and there’s a creeping dread that lingers throughout the book.

That said, I struggled a bit to keep track of the large cast and ever twisting mystery plot, especially in audio format. The constant shifts made it hard to stay anchored in the whodunit aspect. However, the narrator's smoky, haunting voice was an excellent match for the story’s tone and atmosphere and it elevated the experience even when the plot got a little tangled.

Overall, Girl in the Creek is a gorgeously written, deeply eerie read that stands out in the current wave of fungal horror. A bit dense at times, but definitely worth diving into if you like your horror dark, strange, and weird.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Wendy N. Wagner for the audio ARC. All opinions are my own.

Was this review helpful?

4/5 stars 🌲🧬💀🍄

Imagine The Last of Us, X-Men, and a gritty detective novel went on a bender in the woods. That’s Girl in the Creek—a genre mashup that shouldn’t work but absolutely does.

It opens like a mystery, dips into sci-fi horror, and then explodes into emotional chaos and creepy imagery. The pacing had me hooked, and the side characters were surprisingly developed. The vibe? Wet, weird, and wonderfully uncomfortable.

The middle gets a little genre-swirly—there’s trauma, body horror, corruption, spores, and grief all happening at once. But the second half pulls it all together with emotional weight and haunting imagery. Honestly, it could’ve been split into two books, but it still felt complete.

Highly recommend if you like your horror thoughtful, your mysteries weird, and your mushrooms cursed. 🍄🫠

Thank you to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the ALC in exchange for my honest review!

Was this review helpful?

Erin is still struggling with the disappearance of her brother several years earlier in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. In an attempt to find out what happened to him, she sets out to follow in his footsteps. Little does she know the nightmare she will face as she begins to unravel the mystery surrounding his disappearance and how this ties into other missing hikers in the area.

This story had me hooked from the beginning and I actually listened to this in less than a day. The story was so intriguing and I just loved how the story played out. The audio narrator was the perfect choice for this book and I would love to hear more from Jennifer Pickens as I thought her voice was so amazing for this. I loved the setting in the PNW and how nature is entwined in the horror story. So well written and I can't wait to read more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for the ALC!

Was this review helpful?

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. This book definitely did not take the path I was expecting, and honestly kind of ended up being a different genre than I had anticipated, but it really got under my skin. The writing style is pretty fascinating, and the author managed to conjure up some physical sensations in my body with the incredible imagery. However, I was kind of lukewarm on some of the characters and the development of the plot.

Was this review helpful?

This one definitely gives Jeff vandemeer vibes. I totally see the comparison. Creepy nature doing creepy unnatural things? If that is your jam this is your book! I wish we wouldn’t have been introduced to the creepy nature thing til later on in the book, it kinda threw me for a loop but I bet many will still love this one!

Was this review helpful?

This was ok. I didn't find myself connecting with any of the many characters and I often confused them. The story moved pretty slowly for me, as well, and I often found myself zoning out.

Was this review helpful?

While I feel the book was well written, and I enjoyed the narrator as well, I feel that the description of the book led me to believe it would be a woodsy horror theme, and it was, but I would definitely add gruesome sci fi horror to the description, as I felt like I was somewhat misled. I did not finish this book.

Was this review helpful?

Wow this story was a wild ride! The pacing in the beginning was a bit slow but once the action started it just kept going until the end. The characters were really great and they felt fully formed. I loved how inclusive the characters were, their sexuality was highlighted but was not the center of their character development. I love the genre of ecohorror and have read several mushroom horror based books. This one is now at the top of my list. The writing was clear and obviously well researched on the topic of mycelium. The setting was so vivid that I felt like I could see the forest around them. The narrators was phenomenal. I would highly suggest horror readers and even thriller readers to check this one out.

Was this review helpful?

Missing people, killer spores, and a forest with way too many secrets! I listened to The Girl in the Creek - it’s a weird, woodsy read with creepy vibes and mushrooms galore.

Erin returns home looking for answers about her brother’s disappearance, but instead she finds a whole mess of STRANGENESS, including a girl who vanishes, an eerie old hotel, and some truly suspicious fungus.

This one had a fun, Scooby-Doo/slightly cosmic-horror feel that I wasn’t expecting, and while it didn’t totally blow me away, I enjoyed the vibes and love a good eco-horror twist. The audiobook narration was fantastic and engaging all the way through.

Big thanks to NetGalley & @macmillan.audio for the listen. The Girl in the Creek will publish later this month, July 15th.

Was this review helpful?

I wanted to love Girl in the Creek more than I did.

Set in a small town in the PNW, the atmosphere of the story was perfect. Rainy, gloomy, and just a bit eerie sets the stage for what's about to unfold. Erin is a journalist, arriving in the small town of Faraday on the pretense of writing a tourist article, but really there to help her best friend, Hari, investigate a string of disappearances. But the disappearances might not be as straightforward as they seem...

My main issue with this book was what everyone's ultimate fate was. I enjoyed where Erin ended up, and can see how what happened to everyone else was required for that to happen, but seriously?! None of her friends survived? It almost made me give up when I got to that point. I also wish that certain themes were explored more -- either the serial killers or the magic mushrooms. Having both made for a compelling story but also left me feeling like both could have been explored more. The book touches on some very real issues with true crime, specifically around missing women of color, and I wish that had been dug into more. But that also wasn't the point of this book I guess.

Overall, I had a good time reading this for the most part, the narrator was engaging as was the story. I also loved the casual queer rep!

Was this review helpful?

I requested this book because it's being marketed as "cosmic horror climate fiction in the vein of Jeff VanderMeer," and I'm sorry, none of that is true. This is NOT cosmic horror, it's maybe climate fiction if you squint, and VanderMeer's oeuvre implies a lot more than just "spore horror." This book wasn't even weird!

I have a great book-friend who no longer reads plot synopses because they're so frequently misleading, and situations like this make me understand their stance. Girl in the Creek came across as painfully slow to me, because by the 40% mark we STILL hadn't covered all the events listed on Goodreads. I'm also irritated that we got so much information about "the Strangeness" right off the bat (the first chapter is from the perspective of a coyote who has been infected with a sentient fungus that gives her supernatural intelligence and strength). It feels like for the entire first half, it makes choices that robbed the story of tension... which is not a strong choice for a horror novel to make.

I recommend if you do read this book, take a moment to jot down the names of the characters and some trait about them so you can keep them straight. There's a lot of characters introduced in rapid succession, and I found myself struggling a little to recall who was who (especially the male characters). They all behave in strange ways that kept pulling me out of the story too. Like, if someone told me, "I found a wooden carving in the woods in your missing son's art style," my reaction would not be, "would you like to see more of my missing son's artwork?" People are way too chill about everything. They're not the brightest either; there's an important puzzle piece towards the end I was just yelling at the book about, but none of the other characters gave it a second thought. Also watching these character express fear of infection via mushroom spores while no one even mentions putting on a mask was so aggravating.

Eventually we do get introduced to some truly gruesome body horror and new stakes, but by then we were past the halfway point and I just didn't care. However if you're a big spore horror fan, you're going to love this. There are some nasty visuals burned into my mind.

I have to mention this part because it bothered me so much. There's a section where some of the characters go to a man for his expertise. They literally describe him as an expert. He uses some basic technical terms while talking about his subject, and the characters ask him to explain what those words mean. The next time he uses a technical term he stops himself to explain what it is... and the speech tag used in the narrative is "he mainsplained." What is up with that? I guess you can argue that the characters could infer the meaning of the word at that point, but it was so jarring. You spent paragraphs establishing this man as someone who knows more than these characters, and that the characters want the terms explained. He'd be more of a dick if he kept barreling ahead with no explanations at that point! Ugh.

It was cool to read a book where the protagonist is a vegetarian though. That was really neat.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for giving me this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Was this review helpful?

A creepy slow build, drama and trauma.
Erin knows something more than missing happened to her brother, Brian. Her friends travel to the forests of the Pacific Northwest - a mecca of missing people. Sifting through the town, the forest and residents, Erin pushes against the strangeness - determined to bring the light to the missing.

Was this review helpful?

⭐️⭐️⭐️½ (3.5/5)

Girl in the Creek offers a chilling journey into the quiet terror of the natural world, where creeping fungi and buried secrets slowly take root in both the landscape and the lives of its characters. Wendy N. Wagner crafts a story that leans into atmospheric dread, with unsettling fungal elements that give the book a distinctly eerie, almost parasitic tone.

What I appreciated most was the group dynamic—rather than isolating the narrative to a single protagonist, Wagner allows us to follow a cast of characters working together to uncover what’s wrong in their small community. This collaborative approach felt grounded and real, adding a layer of believability to the increasingly strange events.

The chapters told from the perspective of the fungal presence added a fascinating, creepy flair, hinting at a larger intelligence that’s both ancient and unknowable. However, despite these strengths, the story fell a bit short of its full potential. The plot remained fairly linear, lacking any major twists or deeper character development. While the characters were likable and authentic, they didn’t leave a lasting impression—and I found myself wanting more emotional depth and narrative complexity.

That said, Girl in the Creek would make a great starting point for readers new to horror, especially those who usually gravitate toward thrillers. It’s eerie without being overwhelming, and its approachable style makes it a solid, if not standout, entry in the genre.

Was this review helpful?

🎧 Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner
Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens
⭐ 3.5/5

📖 Quick Summary:
A true-crime podcaster investigates weird disappearances linked to something creepy lurking in the Pacific Northwest woods.

💭 What I Liked:
Genuinely creepy and atmospheric.
Loved the different points of view, especially the unsettling perspective of the fungus-thing called "the Strangeness."
Characters felt real, relatable, and well-developed.
Great audiobook experience—the narrator nailed the mood.
The tension and spooky atmosphere stayed strong throughout.

🤔 What Didn't Work for Me:
Honestly wished it had been longer. The ending was good, but left me wanting more detail.

🎙️ Narration & Audio Performance:
Fantastic audio. Definitely boosted the creepiness. If you're thinking of grabbing this one, the audiobook is worth it.

📖 If You Liked...:
The Ruins by Scott Smith
The Haar by David Sodergren
No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill

💬 Final Thoughts:
Girl in the Creek was a solid, creepy read that held my attention. It's a good pick if you're into unsettling, atmospheric stories.

Was this review helpful?