Kate’s Review: “What The Woods Took”

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Book: “What The Woods Took” by Courtney Gould

Publishing Info: Wednesday Books, December 2024

Where Did I Get This Book: I received an eARC from NetGalley.

Where You Can Get This Book: WorldCat.org | Amazon | Indiebound

Book Description: Yellowjackets meets Girl, Interrupted when a group of troubled teens in a wilderness therapy program find themselves stranded in a forest full of monsters eager to take their place.

Devin Green wakes in the middle of the night to find two men in her bedroom. No stranger to a fight, she calls to her foster parents for help, but it soon becomes clear this is a planned abduction—one everyone but Devin signed up for. She’s shoved in a van and driven deep into the Idaho woods, where she’s dropped off with a cohort of equally confused teens. Finally, two camp counselors inform them that they’ve all been enrolled in an experimental therapy program. If the campers can learn to change their self-destructive ways—and survive a fifty-days hike through the wilderness—they’ll come out the other side as better versions of themselves. Or so the counselors say.

Devin is immediately determined to escape. She’s also determined to ignore Sheridan, the cruel-mouthed, lavender-haired bully who mocks every group exercise. But there’s something strange about these woods—inhuman faces appearing between the trees, visions of people who shouldn’t be there flashing in the leaves—and when the campers wake up to find both counselors missing, therapy becomes the least of their problems. Stranded and left to fend for themselves, the teens quickly realize they’ll have to trust each other if they want to survive. But what lies in the woods may not be as dangerous as what the campers are hiding from each other—and if the monsters have their way, no one will leave the woods alive.

Atmospheric and sharp, What the Woods Took is a poignant story of transformation that explores the price of becoming someone—or something—new.

Review: Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this novel!

While I myself never had to experience the horrible injustices of the troubled teen industry, one of my very good friends found himself shipped off to the Idaho wilderness with promises of “fixing him” to his parents while he was in actuality subjected to abusive conditions under guise of therapy. He’s a pretty well adjusted person all things considered, but many others cannot say the same. I’d been fascinated with the troubled teen industry even before he told me about his experience, and when I heard about the book “What The Woods Took” by Courtney Gould I knew that I wanted to read it. Troubled teen wilderness therapy AND horror themes? I was definitely interested. 

In terms of supernatural horror, I found myself thinking of stories like “The Thing” as I read this book. Isolation in the stark wilderness is already scary, but throwing in something that can pass off as a human but it actually otherworldly and threatening is a fun trope on its own, and Gould takes it and adds more paranoia with a group of people who don’t know each other or trust each other, raising the stakes more. I liked the slow burn of the group of teens struggling not just against being abandoned in the wild, but also struggling against a villain that can hide itself in plain sight, adding more to the paranoia. Gould takes her time building the suspense and it makes for an enjoyable horror tale.

But what worked best for me was how Gould fleshes out our teenage characters, as they go from realizing they are going from one dangerous situation to another. We get backgrounds for a lot of them, and while on the surface the reader can gleam and draw certain conclusions, we get to know them, understand the circumstances that got them to this so called wilderness therapy camp, and realize that instead of being “bad kids” they are all dealing with heavy stuff that affects them in different ways. And while it’s true that some of them do have some violent tendencies, there are others who are just there because their parents are inconvenienced, or trying to get rid of them for petty infractions, or demonizing them for their own failings. It’s an emotional deconstruction of these terrible programs, and it really shows the ways these programs take advantage of this kind of pain for profit and control. Showing the true horrors of this industry, whether or not the adults involved mean well, was the most upsetting part of this novel. And this is the horror story that plays out in real life, making it that much scarier.

“What The Woods Took” is a creepy story that unnerved me quite a bit. Definitely one to check out.

Rating 8: Strange and unsettling, with some well done real life horrors as well as otherworldly ones.

Reader’s Advisory:

“What The Woods Took” is included on the Goodreads list “Queer Horror”.