Guest Audio Book Review - What Lies in The Woods by Kate Alice Marshal

AUDIO BOOK REVIEW

WHAT LIES IN THE WOODS : KATE ALICE MARSHALL

by Rachael Tamayo

I have a lot of feelings about this audiobook. First, it was beautifully narrated by the amazing Karissa Vacker, whom I have enjoyed in other books. Great job, superb voice acting.

That aside, the book earns a rough three stars from me, falling short of the five it could have been. We are thrust into the life of Naomi, who, as a child, survived a brutal attack as she and her two best friends played in the woods. They succeeded in putting a serial killer in prison, who died twenty-something years later, and brought these three women back together.

The issue is they all lied, and Naomi, who has spotty memories of the events due to her traumatic injuries and scars, is bothered by the pieces that just don’t quite fit together.

My issue is partly with the writing style, which is likely just my personal preference. We don’t go a sentence (or so it seems) without a simile. I love a good simile, but it gets tiresome in the writing and feels more like she’s being poetic with descriptions and feelings, which pulled me out of the character’s head rather than pulling me deeper. Now, I could not connect with the main character. She’s honestly just an awful person, and frankly, trying to solve a murder and figure out the truth behind something that happened twenty years ago didn’t make her likable.

There were almost no likable characters in this book. Everyone is just a bad person; there is no one to connect with as a reader. I think the author was going for PTSD, but it was inconsistent. She came across as a bad person rather than someone dealing with posttraumatic stress. And man, talk about jumping from one conclusion to another- geez. This book would have earned more stars if it had been better executed. The bones of this story are great, the idea is solid, and the story itself works. But the way it was done didn’t sit right with me, so I was not too fond of this one and likely won’t return to this author. This book is available for preorder and will release on January 17, 2023. I received an advanced copy thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley.

About The Guest Reviewer

Rachael Tamayo is the bestselling author of the award-winning Deadly Sins Series and awardwinning thriller Crazy Love, among several other titles. Before she started her writing career, she was a highly awarded 911 emergency services dispatcher with twelve years of experience and many commendations under her belt. Upon exiting law enforcement, she focused her writing career on the dark, suspenseful, and psychological after beginning as a romance author. Now Rachael uses her dark thriller as a sort of self-therapy after all those years answering 911 calls and working all that she knows and was exposed to into the frighteningly realistic and layered characters her readers know and love her for. Rachael lives on the Texas Gulf Coast in Houston, Texas, with her husband and their two children. You can also read Rachael’s book reviews on her website at www.RachaelTamayowrites.com, Bookbub, and Goodreads.