Reviews with content warning for Lesbophobia - El dios de los bosques

“They’ll be fine - don’t need to rely on anyone but themselves. It’s the Van Laars, and families like them, who have always depended on others.”

This is just a good old-fashioned mystery that keeps you interested without doing anything outrageous. The God of the Woods is a more character-driven mystery that spans over decades. It follows a prominent family who owns a ton of land, and a summer camp, out in the Adirondacks. It links together decades worth of mysteries and lies.

I will admit, this started a bit slow for me. There are lots of different characters to keep track of and several different timeline jumps, so I was a bit confused in the beginning. You really have to pay attention to this one. The way it shifts perspectives between chapters really keeps you turning pages. By the time I was close to finishing I did not want to put it down, because I had to know how it all came together. I felt myself really feeling sorry for Alice throughout the story. That woman went through so much pain and anxiety. The author does a great job of making you loathe the main families and root for the staff, townspeople, and children of the Van Laars.

The summer camp setting was super fun and visual. This left me very satisfied. I really enjoyed that this is a mystery that feels realistic. Because there are so many characters, it is able to keep you guessing until the very end, without having to rely on twists that come completely out of left field. Great fall read!

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echagens's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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alisobrig's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book plateau's a bit in the middle plot-wise, but the rich characters completely make up for it! Totally fulfilled my need for a gripping read, bonus points that it featured a summer camp and the 70s (two vibes that I really get sucked into)

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wildflowerhoney's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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sarasreading's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Even though this one takes place during the summer, it still felt like a great October read to me. It's blended between literary fiction and mystery, a bit like Everything I Never Told You (which I love) but with more focus on crime solving. I had a bunch of theories and was right in some cases and fully wrong in others. So it kept me on my toes. I don't know if I'd put it as one of my absolute favorite books of the year, as many have, but it was a very good mystery with realistic characters.

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gwenswoons's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is very good, but I did not enjoy it. I think somehow the literary thriller thing veered into something so slow that it often felt preachy and pedantic, endless, often incredibly pretentious somehow. The writing is good: the setting is definitely captivating and vivid; the characters are compelling, even as they are basically all pretty awful. I guess for me a cast of totally awful characters (whether in books or TV shows) never feels satisfying — so I may simply not be the reader for this. But I will say that this book felt interminable to me, almost from the beginning (I definitely should have DNFed, but it’s gotten so much praise from people I trust that I expected it to turn around into something miraculous! It did not, for me). The pace is so unbelievably slow, the timelines and POVs so sprawling — these are things (even a slow pace!) that I actually usually love in a book, but that felt like such a drag here, I think because the motivations of every person aroused so little sympathy and investment. Certainly others may not feel this way.

I will say that I somehow loved the ending, and found it so beautiful, with such a light touch — odd after this book that felt so heavy-handed to me. It was absolutely not worth it for me but I somehow was still quite enchanted by it even as I was so ready to be done. So the writing is definitely remarkable in some way, even though for me this is not going to be a writer I return to again.

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koplomps's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

The first 4/5 of this book was so slow, boring, and somehow alot of it was in no way important. I don't understand why we were told the story of Alice, but only teeny tiny bits from HER perspective.
(I'm going to immediately contradict my last statement) Maybe the writer was trying to bring out how little say she had in her own life, that even her lifestory is told for her, and not by her. And yes, her story was important in a way to show

how needed it was for Barbara to escape the same destiny her mother had been given, and which was still going to continue with that poor 17-year old girl who doesn't yet understand better than Jean Paul jr. I wish they had thrown him to jail. Thank god he got sued for assault

Maybe I had such a bad time with this book because I don't enjoy reading about nonlikeable characters..?
The ending did save this book for me, but I'm not going to recommend this to others, and hope I don't stumble upon a similiar book for a long while.

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