In this scary story, evil lurks in the woods. Including wood spirits and an ancient evil, the woods turn against everybody who dares entering...with bloody consequences.
Creepy woods and lots of gore, B-movie style - the summary immediately caught my interest, but unfortunately I lost it almost immediately when I strated reading. The prologue, which explains the wood spirits and the reason why the Nilhollow area is doomed, was somewhat irritating - unspeakable spirit names which I constantly mixed up (was it the little ones or the great one she was talking about now?!) and had a hard time sorting out. Though I really wanted to find something likeable about the book (hey: savage creatures, gore, woods - it does sound great, doesn't it!), in the back of my head a small voice kept telling me that the whole setup was totally ridiculous.
The plot itself brought nothing new: people go into the woods, people die horrible bloody deaths, other people start a search party, more people die, some people survive. While the story was routinely written, I never felt close to it or its characters, but remained indifferent, sometimes even bored. What bothers me most is that I can't find any great flaw explaining my dislike, I guess I just missed some WOW effect that would have made this one special. It just didn't work for me.
(Thanks to Netgalley, the author, and the publisher for a copy of the book, all opinions are my own)