What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall

This was a dark, twisted thriller that definitely kept me guessing throughout the story and one I’d highly recommend.

Three young girls are playing games in the woods until one, Naomi, is brutally attacked. She survives and the three girls identify the attacker and testify to put him in jail. Although the girls remain friends after the ordeal, each has her own way of coping even 20 years later.

About 20 years later, Naomi hears that her attacker is dead but instead of feeling relief she starts to question her memories of that fateful day. She is also receiving calls from one of the other girls, Olivia, and decides to travel back to her hometown to uncover the truth.

There are several twists and turns that kept this book exciting and made it difficult to determine the truth until the end. Several theories are very convincing and thus it was hard to choose which I thought was the real situation. Other characters mix in their own agendas which makes the search for the truth even more complex.

The ending and reveal was so dark and chilling and really helped wrap up the storyline in a fantastic way.

Synopsis: 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.