Synopsis
Tess just wants a quiet weekend away, a break from the chaos of her job and the constant noise of other people’s expectations. A remote cabin in the woods sounds perfect.
But peace is the last thing she finds.
When she stumbles into Aiden, a man who seems just as lost as she is, they try to navigate their way out together. But the forest has no intention of letting them go.
Beneath the trees lies something twisted, a presence with the mind of a child and the cruelty of something far older. Tess and Aiden aren’t just lost.
They’ve become pawns in a sinister game.
Death is mercy.
The fray is what comes before.
Review
I happened to see this was on sale on Audible, and I just couldn’t pass it up. As a big fan of Dark Bloom, I was excited for more. The narration by Lauren Campbell is solid, and I think the character of Tess was brought to life very well. And look at this cover!
Tess’ only plan is to take a relaxing weekend away from absolutely everything. No work emails and calls, no fuss, no real-world anything at all. But what she finds is anything but a reprieve. Lost on the first hike, which was supposed to be a simple trail, and with next to no actual outdoor experience, Tess feels almost lucky when she bumps into Aiden. And while he seems lost, too, at least she’s no longer out in the woods alone. With his help, she manages to find her rented cabin, but there’s no end in sight to the horrors.
This one is certainly not for everyone. Unreliable narration and horrors popping off the page, just for them to disappear a chapter later or melt into something worse, this has all the ingredients for a folkloric, depressive nosedive into despair. Notes of this reminded me of the latest iteration of IT and Welcome to Derry, how Pennywise will alter what his victims see, feel, and hear. The entity in these woods is after some similar mind-melting horrors, too.
There is an air that nothing can be believed, that nothing is real, or that nothing happening actually is happening; that usually doesn’t really work for me in stories or movies, but this time it does. It doubles, triples, even quadruples down on the level of exhaustion and burnout Tess is struggling with. It is a blend of depression and being at your wits’ end that feels like you have to question what exactly she’s fighting so hard for. Perseverance or just general persistence of life. It reminded me of what I was trying to achieve with my own short, ‘When All I Feel is Pain’ from Tales From Cemetery. And while it’s not up to me to say if I was successful, I certainly think Molly is. Bleak yet strong. Depressive yet persevering. This is not just some hollow novella, but the good guys can’t always be in control, can’t always win.
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