4.25-4.5 / 5.0 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 —— The God of the Woods weaves together a fascinating mix of:
• Gone Girl-style regionalism/pacing (minus, thankfully, the depths of sadism),
• Baby Sitters’ Club Mystery girl-power nostalgia (leveled up for their original fans now grown),
• Thoreau references to appreciate & chuckle at, and
• multi-decade elite entourages & class commentary à la The Great Gatsby’s Buchanans.

In The God of the Woods, Liz Moore cinematically carries out a solid, multi-perspective, multi-timeline organizational style. Character development balances intentional voice-building with ownership of its clichés. The God of the Woods also nicely works to subvert expectations of the semi-thriller/mystery genre while intuitively exploring generational submission vs. empowerment, as well as issues of patriarchy vs. matriarchy, legacy, classism, mental health, instinct, and closure. I found at least 90% page-turning and worth 4.5+ stars — but at times longed for the author to take more chances or make things messier even more.

Are all of the characters likable? At times, all them I detest; other times, all of them, I appreciate in their own way. All of them earn their keep. As I read, I chuckled often to think to one GoodReads review noting so much dislike for the characters that they declared “Let her be lost; let all of them be lost, actually” (@brend). In answer to that review, I sense this aggravation was intentionally part of Moore’s goal: to generate in us Gatsby-level disgust for the whole lot, yet  challenge is to preserve their humanity, too.

All in all, I found this to be an engaging, mostly-satisfying read. It was also the first time my library surprised me a rare “skip-the-line loan” of an e-book, so cool!

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.

I picked this up because it is the Literally Dead Book Club pick for the month of September.
"The God of the Woods" is a novel that follows a group of characters after a teenager disappears while at summer camp. In August 1975, a camp counselor wakes up and realizes one of her campers, thirteen-year-old Barbara Van Laar, is missing. Barbara is not just any camper, she is the daughter of the camp's owners, and this is not the first time a Van Laar has gone missing in these woods. Fourteen years ago, Barbara's older brother disappeared in the same woods, and to this day, no one has been able to figure out what happened to him.
This felt like a slower paced mystery, and the perfect read to conclude a summer TBR and kick off a fall TBR. I really enjoyed the summer camp setting for this time of year because it made it feel very fall centric, but the mystery was a great way to kick off the inevitable spooky season reads.
The idea that this was not the first disappearance in these woods, especially because it involved siblings 14 years apart was such an engaging idea, and I loved it! The parallels that were continually drawn between the Van Leer children were beautifully done, and it was also a fun reading experience to try to understand two mysteries simultaneously.
Barbara was a complex character, and I think she was exactly the character the reader needed to see to understand how complex the Van Leer family truly is. Barbara is your typical, misunderstand daughter from a wealthy, well-off family that is more concerned about their appearance in the community than actually taking care of their children. I was at the edge of my seat trying to uncover whether the family themselves had something to do with the disappearance of either child, because as the story progresses, it becomes very clear that the Van Leers are not as wholesome as they wish to be. Throughout the story, we also get moments from the past, leading up to Barbara's disappearance through the perspective of Barbara's friend from camp. I really enjoyed this dynamic and watching as she tried to decide for herself if Barbara was truthful with her.
The Van Leer's are a family rife with tension and secrets, and I really enjoyed getting to dig into their story. I feel like they are trying so hard to be the good family they try to project, and most people do not see through the facade. Most of the Van Leers are so unlikable.
Barbara's resolution I really enjoyed. I do think it might be slightly outside the realm of believable possibility that a thirteen-year-old could pull something like this off, but I understood why she did what she did and I think it was a unique direction for the novel to go. As for Barbara's brother, I was underwhelmed. I was definitely surprised, and I think the author did a great job of keeping the reader in the dark until the last possible moment, but it just felt so cold-hearted. I wanted more justice for him.
I very much enjoyed this story, and I am looking forward to reading more from Liz Moore in the future!