Review: THE GOD OF THE WOODS (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

Book Beginnings quote:

"The bed is empty."

Friday56 quote:

“It was wonderful, thought Tracy, having friends like these, who seemed to see the parts of yourself you worked hardest to hide, and bring them into the light and celebrate them with a sort of tender ribbing that uplifted more than it put down.”

Summary: 

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances.

Review: I listened to the audiobook of The God of the Woods by Liz Moore last month. All 14 hours and 35 minutes of it. The story is a double murder mystery with the suspected murders happening fourteen years apart. Like all mysteries I have a hard time reviewing them because the point of the book is to discover who-dunnit and if I tell you, then there is no point in you reading it. Instead, I will give you a few of my thoughts of the book.

1. The mystery begins with the first line, "The bed was empty."
2. Th Friday56 quote is about Tracy, a young camper, who finally feels accepted after years of being an outsider. Acceptance is a powerful motivator for staying silent when one should speak up.
3. There are a lot of suspects. In fact, I'd say that everyone is a suspect with the exception of the police and the children campers.
4. For that reason there are a lot of people to keep track of and details presented early on in the story have to be remembered to fill in gaps closer to the end. Don and I listened to it together so we had the benefit of stopping the audiobook to remind the other person of earlier details or even to discuss who so&so was.
5. There were so many red herrings. I swear I actually thought at least a half dozen of the people were the murderers at one point or another during the story.
6. Oddly for a book so crammed with characters, I didn't really like anyone and some of the characters I actually hated. Maybe the one exception was the police inspector, Judy, and possibly the camp counselor Louise. Otherwise, blech, those rich people were all awful, AWFUL.
7. The book was long, 490 pages, and there were more than one part where the action dragged and I thought "get on with it."
8. There story unfolded in two timelines, one for the first murder investigation and another for the second. Fortunately there was timeline help in the headings of the chapters, so I was rarely confused.

The God of the Woods ended up on a lot of the end-of-the-year favorite book lists for 2024. Many citing how thrilling the plot and how unputdownable to book is. I rated the book with 4 stars, losing 1 star for its length and all the awful, despicable characters.

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*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

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-Anne