Book Club Monday: What Lies in the Woods

Author: Kate Alice Marshall Title: What Lies in the Woods Publisher: Flatiron Books Date Published: 01/17/2023

Read Dates: 09/21/2026- 09/24/2026
Rating:⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

This was my family book club pick for September.

What Lies in the Woods is a single POV thriller that focuses on Naomi as she struggles to figure out how her horrific past is shaping her present day. At eleven years old, Naomi survived a brutal attack in the woods, stabbed 17 times and left for dead. Her two best friends, Cass and Liv ran for help and have been by her side ever since. When the man they identified dies in prison 20 years later, the three come back together: Naomi struggling with unexpected guilt that her childhood testimony put a man in prison for the rest of his life, Liv struggling with the weight of other secrets they kept from that summer, and Cass struggling to get her friends to focus on their present and futures and not go courting trouble. But when Liv goes missing, Naomi goes down a path to find answers about that summer, her attack, their childhood secrets, and uncovering who was really to blame.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit! It did get a little convoluted at the end, so many rapid fire twists it was hard to keep track but fascinating to see it all unravel. Prickly Naomi, scarred inside and out by the attack in specific and her childhood & life in general was easy to root for even when she wasn’t easy to like! Trying to figure out who else to trust in the story kept me on my toes though! This is my second book from this author and I’ll definitely read more!

Naomi Shaw used to believe in magic. Twenty-two years ago, she and her two best friends, Cassidy and Olivia, spent the summer roaming the woods, imagining a world of ceremony and wonder. They called it the Goddess Game. The summer ended suddenly when Naomi was attacked. Miraculously, she survived her seventeen stab wounds and lived to identify the man who had hurt her. The girls’ testimony put away a serial killer, wanted for murdering six women. They were heroes.

For decades afterward, the friends have kept a secret worth killing for. But now Olivia wants to tell, and Naomi sets out to find out what really happened in the woods―no matter how dangerous the truth turns out to be.