Like most books compared to The Secret History, We Went to the Woods isn’t as good, so let’s just get that out of the way. Which I’m not saying to be spiteful, I just genuinely don’t want to see this book flop because of unrealistically high expectations. Yes, it follows a group of friends who isolate themselves and end up propelled inevitably into tragedy, and yes, it reads like a train wreck in the best kind of way, so it’s an understandable comparison. But it’s also a deeply aggravating book, and I say that as someone who thoroughly enjoyed it.

We Went to the Woods focuses on Mack, a grad school dropout who, fleeing some kind of messy event in her past (more on that in a second), joins a group of idealistic young people who essentially endeavor to live in a modern-day socialist commune. That’s basically the plot: many pages of gardening and rivalries and sexual tension and social activism ensue.

My biggest issue with this book was the way Mack’s backstory was handled: what should have been presented to the reader on page one was nonsensically withheld for a lame kind of ‘gotcha!’ moment halfway through the book that added nothing to the narrative or the suspense. When Mack finally tells her story, it feels like a stranger reciting it rather than the narrator whose head we’d been inhabiting for several hundred pages – so little does the event actually impact her thoughts or actions (other than providing the incentive she needed to abandon her life and join this project).

My other main issue is pace: though I found this compelling, mostly due to Caite Dolan-Leach’s elegant and clever writing, I imagine that for a lot of readers, it’s probably going to drag. With a cover and title like this it’s easy to imagine that you’re in for some kind of thriller, but like We Went to the Woods‘ predecessor, Dead Letters, I fear that this book is going to suffer from ‘marketed as a thriller, gets bad reviews because it’s actually literary fiction’ syndrome. However, where Dead Letters (an underrated gem, in my opinion) is the kind of book where a single word isn’t out of place, We Went to the Woods languishes, unnecessarily so. I can only hope a few hundred more redundant words are chopped before its publication date.

But to be honest, the only reason I’m dwelling so much on the negatives is because I did enjoy it so much – it’s the kind of book that fully earned my investment and therefore frustrated me all the more in the areas where it fell short. That said, there’s so much to recommend it. This book is a contemporary zeitgeist, taking a premise that seems to belong in the 60s and modernizing it with urgency. In a scene where the characters learn the results of the 2016 election, their reactions are almost painfully recognizable, and the book’s main themes and social commentary dovetail again and again, always asking the same question: how important is activism in late-stage capitalism; is it better to try something that turns out to be futile or not try anything at all? Though the characters do quite a bit of moralizing, Dolan-Leach doesn’t, as she recognizes the complexity of the book’s central conceit.

And on top of all that, I found it incredibly entertaining. Slow pace aside, I was so drawn into this story and couldn’t wait to find out what happened next. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who needs their protagonists to be likable, but if you enjoy character studies about twisted, flawed individuals, this is a pretty good one.

I don’t think this book is a good fit for me. Thank you for the opportunity to review it and I hope to read more from this author in the future.

I had a really hard time with this book. At times I was completely engrossed in the characters and storyline. The premise of the whole thing was so good and the stories of the homesteaders interwoven with personal dramas was very driving.

But there were crazy inconsistencies. For such a long, detailed story, how did the author sit with the main character meeting these people one time and then SUDDENLY they are all bffs and want to live together? At one point they are picking fruit from a tree and the description turns from peach to apple three times before I had to just let it go. Then the ending, incredibly rushed and unsentimental after building up these characters for so long.

Again, I had a hard time. Good story telling but the inconsistencies were too much for me.

This book is squarely in my wheelhouse and was probably the most engaging read I've picked up this year. I've always loved books with the equivalent of an ensemble cast and where the characters are not necessarily likable. Think Secret History by Donna Tartt, The Girls by Emma Cline, or Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman, and you'll get my drift. If you need to love the characters to enjoy a novel, I don't suggest picking this one up.

Mack, Chloe, Louisa, Beau and Jack are present day millenial types who decide to try to live sustainably off the land, growing their own food, and sans electricity or plumbing in upstate New York. As someone who was born in Ithaca and lived upstate for twenty years, I think the characterization of upstate NY and the weather and challenges with living off the land year around were well portrayed. There's a lot of underlying tension, both hostile and sexual, in this book, not simply amongst the five aforementioned, but with the neighboring Collective.

The author does a nice job building suspense throughout though I felt like there were a few unanswered plot points in the end that made for a less than perfectly satisfying reading experience. Nonetheless, I love a dark, suspenseful, character driven novel, and this one checked a lot of boxes for me personally.

Five people with different personalities are going to live off the land/get off the grid...and only one has any farming experience.🤷‍♀️Obvious pitfalls arise such as food lasting through the winter and complicated friendships/sexual relationships, but those aren't even the main story. There are arguments with neighbors over chemical dumping and partnerships with another nearby intentional community over acts of civil disobedience and picketing. Knowing that other intentional communities have failed, the main character Mack takes it upon herself to figure out why they failed so that this one will succeed. But while she focuses on her research, everyone else is focusing on something else.

My interest was caught by We Went to the Woods when I read the blurb. I thought to myself, “This sounds like it will be a good read.” In a way, it was. The author was able to showcase how hard it was to form the type of compound that Louisa wanted. She was able to highlight how hard it was to start and the failures that the Homestead went through in the first year. But, at the same time, I had to force myself to finish reading We Went to the Woods. I got bored reading it.

The plotline was well written and very descriptive. I wasn’t a fan of how it turned out. Mack had no clue what Louisa, Beau, and Jack were doing. I know that she was kept in the dark, but she should have had a clue when she stumbled upon the weapons cache at the Collective. Instead, she turned into an ostrich. Heck, even Chloe know more than she did.

I wasn’t a fan of Mack. The book was told from her perspective (1st person). Her insecurities and her jealousy colored it. It got to the point where I would roll my eyes whenever she made mention of lanterns going between the cabins.

The author dragged out what happened to Mack. What she did was disgusting, no doubt. The backlash was disgusting too. I wish that it had been revealed sooner in the book. The bits and pieces that were leaked drove me nuts.

I do wish that the author focused more on the workings of the Homestead. I was fascinated at how they were able to make a thriving farm from nothing.

I was fascinated by the community they found. I thought that communes were a thing of the past. To find out that there are still communes out there fascinated me.

I wasn’t a fan of the polyamorous relationships that were featured in the book. I know people in polyamorous relationships, and they are nothing like what was featured in the book. What was featured was the worst side of those types of relationships.

The end of the We Went to the Woods was confusing. I wanted to know what happened to certain characters. I also wanted to know was Mack considering doing what I think she was doing? It was so vague that I didn’t know what was going on.

I would give We Went to the Woods an Adult rating. There is sex. There is language. There is violence. I would recommend that no one under the age of 21 read this book.

I would reread We Went to the Woods I would recommend it to family and friends.

**I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book**

An oddly strange book that I didn't like. Might be the first and last book I read from this author. Full of sex and politics in a sort of survivalist mode. Received arc from Netgalley.

"We Went to the Woods" starts with ominous promises: secrets, deception, a dark ending. Sadly, for me, the book does not quite live up to those promises. Dolan-Leach writes well, and I found myself breezing through the book and thinking about it throughout the day while I was reading it. Unfortunately, the story itself was perhaps less than compelling, in part because Dolan-Leach took too long to unwind the "secrets" held by each of the characters--ultimately leading to fairly anticlimactic twists, and never really resulting in particularly great stakes. This was an issue from the very start, even with Mack's joining the rest of the group to begin the Homestead: she buys into the whole endeavor far too quickly, so that it seemed to come out of nowhere to the reader. When we find out more about Mack's history later on, the choice makes more sense; but it also makes the later revelation about Mack's background fall somewhat flat. More than that, it made me wonder why Dolan-Leach chose to wait so long to tell us about Mack's graduate studies and interests, when it actually informed so much of the character's choices up until that point.

The characters are navel-gazing millennials of the highest order, which was occasionally amusing but mostly exhausting. Beau, in particular, had an extremely affected way of speaking ("wee Mack" and "bloody nymph" being the two greatest offenders that stuck out during my read -- no 20-something American man speaks like that). In general, Mack struck me as a generally unreliable narrator, but I'm not sure Dolan-Leach intended for her to be thus. But her starry-eyed view of Beau in particular (contrasted to her vision of Louisa as a nagging shrew) struck me as out of sync with the story the reader was actually being shown. The "lessons" of the book were overwrought, especially in the scenes when Mack returns home for Christmas. By the middle of the book, I was annoyed with Mack's passivity and inability to ask questions -- for all of Mack's disdain for Fennel and Louisa's directness, some on her own part would have saved a lot of grief. By the end of the book, I was generally frustrated -- there was truly no shock or high stakes in the ending, because it all unwound so quickly. While I did generally enjoy the read, and it did make me re-think some of my own consumption habits and connections to my surroundings, I'd only recommend it for someone who's looking for a decent read and doesn't mind self-absorbed hipsters. Nonetheless, thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy.

Reminiscent of The Secret History and If We Were Villains. I adored it--dark academia is an evergreen favorite of mine. The characters were distinguished well from the beginning and I loved how the author forced you to sympathize with the unsympathetic.

Absolutely gorgeous and beautiful writing, but the commune storyline just did not appeal to me or keep me interested. I definitely think the right reader would love this book.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42179785

Just over two and a half years ago, I read and thoroughly enjoyed Dolan-Leach's debut novel surrounding twin sisters. In her second novel, she returns to the same upstate New York setting, but tackles another topic that always piques my interest - cults/communes. The narrator, Mackenzie, is running from her own post-college failures and public humiliation as she returns to her hometown. There, she makes the acquaintance of first Louisa, then Beau, Chloe and Jack. These five millennial agree to follow their convictions (which can be both annoying and contradictory to read about - adding realism to the book) in the creation of a Homestead on Louisa's family's land.

The land itself has a history of cultish intrigues, with a sect leaving the Oneida commune to settle there over a hundred years before this 2007/2008 group. The premise is interesting - and the historical angle works well and is neatly woven in. But, the characters here are hard to like - although I did appreciate the cameo appearance of Zelda from Dead Letters! The pacing, though, suffers because of the characters and the tension that I had expected to quickly rise, doesn't build quite the way I expected. The only character I felt truly invested in was Argos...

I just never really felt connected to the story. I didn't hate the book, or anything, but I never found myself rushing to pick it back up, either. It's well-written, and the characters certainly feel authentic, but ultimately, I never really cared what would happen to any of them. This could be in part because my hopes were so high due to my love for her debut novel, so I am curious to see what she will write next.

This departs from the spate of recent/forthcoming novels set inside communes/cults in that the narrator is an (ex)anthropology grad student who becomes interested in earlier attempts at utopian societies and the reasons for their failures, so she is perhaps more self-aware and objective as compared to protagonists of similar works. It made for an interesting but perhaps less emotionally resonant story? I liked the historical elements woven into the plot and it was a compelling read.

This book follows five adults in the early 20's as they start an intentional community or a homestead in upstate New York. In an area where the Oneida community and Thoreau were influential, a group of present day people search for meaning by living back to the land. All five people have joined for different reasons and these reasons become somewhat apparent throughout the novel.

Dolan-Leach excels at describing the day to day life of a commune and subsequently cult, and moving the story forward without being overly philosophical about intentional communities. I found the group fascinating and this is where the downfall in the novel was. There was a failure to fully develop the characters in the book. We get to see snippets into their lives and glimpses of who they were before coming to the community, but it wasn't a complete picture and I left this book feeling unsatisfied due to this lack of character backstory and development.

One interesting thing Dolan-Leach did was bring in characters from her debut novel "Dead Letters". You don't need to have read Dead Letters to understand this book at all, but it's like a secret and if you have read her first book you get a little bit extra.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing for gifting me with an ARC of Caite Dolan-Leach’s new novel. Below is my unbiased review.

It’s safe to say, I am a fan of Ms. Dolan-Leach. I enjoyed her debut novel, Dead Letters , so I was super excited to receive an early review copy of her newest book. (By the way, wild child Zelda makes an appearance in this novel which I thought was a fun wink & nod to her previous book)
As a long time reader I know three universal truths: 1. Stay out of the woods 2. History repeats itself and 3. It’s always about sex. This book proves I’m correct. Five privileged millennials who are disenchanted with suburbia decide to live off the grid and start their own little commune in the woods of upstate NY. Coincidentally, the land they inhabit was once home to another group of settlers looking to create their own utopia as well. Mack, the narrator of this story soon discovers the morbid history of the previous pilgrims and starts to see parallels between the two groups. Like the saying goes “ Hell is paved with good intentions.” It’s told right from the start that this experience will not end well and not all members of the group will survive. Armed with this knowledge, I was hooked from the start and eager to find out more. While I didn’t care much for these idealistic twits, I did find them well drawn and highly believable. The story moved at a decent pace and I was constantly invested in the journey.

I’m not sure this book will appeal to all readers, but I certainly was pleased. Looking forward to reading more by Caite Dolan-Leach.

What a timely read. It's rather amazing how, when we get down to the bare bones of who we are, what arises. It was interesting to see the interplay between these characters, taste their victories and fears. I know I'm not the only one who has had the desire to just "run away" at some point, and this tale is one example of just what could happen and how impossible it might be. I'll be recommended it to my like-minded friends!

For me, a "three-star" book is one that I don't love reading. It doesn't really grab my attention or make me excited to read it, but I don't dread reading it either. "We Went to the Woods" is a solid three-star book. It was a good book to read as I tried to relax in the evening.
I think that I am part of the demographic that this book would generally attract- I am part of the same generation as the main character, white, raised middle class, college educated. I understand what it's like to have debt because of college and feel frustrated at difficult it is to 'make it.' And I often dream of packing up from where I live and moving to a rural place and seeing if I could just "live off the land." So this book appealed to me.
I did not like any of the characters. There are five main characters living together on the Homestead- what they have dubbed their plot of land/cabins. You get the story from one of the women that has joined the group. She often explains her own character flaws as she recounts and looks back and things that happened. I don't really feel any sympathy for her troubles and none of the people that she interacts with are any better.
From the get-go, you understand that the whole thing has fallen apart. I'm okay with knowing that- the whole book, I kept wondering what crazy event is going to happen and knowing that it falls apart pushed me to read more. However, I don't think that the story really WENT anywhere. They went to the woods... and the things that happen to people that live that kind of lifestyle happened. That's about it. A bit anti-climatic.
Like I said, it was relaxing to read. Not too memorable, but fun in its own way. I'm sure that there are people that will enjoy this book a lot more than I did.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Eschewing the overpopulated and over-processed world in which we live, the premise behind this book, is an appealing concept. However, the characters are so unappealing that it was hard to drum up any enthusiasm for the book. Mack is our narrator, and she has been damaged by some unspecified debacle while she was on a reality show called, fittingly, The Millennials. The small group that she joins to create a self-sustaining community called the Homestead on a remote plot of land is made up of other 20-somethings, and they don’t seem to have an ounce of maturity among them. It’s clear from the beginning of the book that their utopia does not survive, so I’m not giving anything away by saying that it’s surprising it lasts as long as it does. The one thing the five community members have going for them is that they are not as vile as the members of the other utopian community in the vicinity.

What saves the book is Mack’s research into 19th century utopian communities, specifically a small one that lived for a short while on the same land as the Homestead. She finds similarities between the past and present, and both a diary from the 1800s she finds and the information she discovers in her quest for a possible publication add interest to the antics of members of both present-day communities. The author’s descriptive writing is strong, especially when describing the land and the weather. Even reading this in the heat of the Arizona sun, I felt the cold as the author placed her characters in a winter blizzard.

When I saw this book's description, I thought it sounded interesting. Once I got into it, I realized this just isn't the book for me. I stopped just beyond the 20% mark and just haven't even thought of picking it back up to finish. That's pretty telling for me. None of the characters are very likable. From reading a few other reviews, I see there is a plot line still to unfold, but I just don't care enough to actually spend more time on this book. Life's too short for books you aren't enjoying.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I got 25% of the way through this book and had to stop. The writing seemed pretentious to me and I did not care about the characters or what happened to them.

Just not for me. I was interested when I saw it compared to Donna Tartt, but disappointed once I got into the story.

'After that first chilly evening out in the country, we were like unlanded peasants bewtiched by the promise of future rootedness.'

Working one night at a fundraiser behind the bar, Mack enters a caption contest and wins, drawing the attention of beautiful Louisa Stein- Jackson. This is the real win of the night. Invited to her garden party on a cold New York winter night she meets Chloe, Beau, and Jack when she accepts the invitation and is soon charmed by their stimulating conversation and beauty. A week later, Louisa’s seductive dream of running an idyllic Homestead together has taken root in them all. They should have paused to really think about that word, idyllic. Homesteading is anything but, and an organic existence doesn’t happen because you embrace the romanitcism of purity and freedom, you know, everything sold in ads that is all sunshine and beekeeping. But Louisa assures them, this isn’t some ‘half-baked spiritual notion of cutting themselves off from the world”. No, they just want to know what they are eating… be closer to the process. Not ingest poisons that GE farmers provide! It’s not quite the reality twenty-somethings lacking skills are going to be able to achieve without making mistakes. Certainly Louisa’s family wealth doesn’t hurt yet there is irony there I think. Louisa is adamantly against capitilism but a part of the priveldged. Can you really achive this utopia when you are grasping the wealth you’re turning away from for something more genuine? Oh well, nothing wrong with money, so long as they aren’t giving it to those nasty corporations, right? Before they venture forth into the woods, a strange incident seems to seal the deal, driving them into a deeper intimacy when they witness an accident. Certainly it feels ominous.

So begins the farming and as long as they are together that’s all that matters, right? The tender intimacy of it all? Mistakes will happen, they aren’t fools. How together are they really? Beau is a mystery (Mack tells us this), as are his disappearances, regardless of how Louisa seethes inside, it’s accepted by the friends as just his way. But his friendliness with neighbors at the ‘collective’ isn’t going over well, particularly the females. It doesn’t stop Lousia from letting him into her cabin late at night. Are Louisa and Beau really together? In fact, they all seem to take part in nighttime wanderings, except for Mack. Mack is the watcher, desperately jealous for her own trysts. Too cowardly to take what she wants, instead content to yearn from afar. Naturally she is as pulled in by Beau’s magnetism as the rest. Jack is the most solid, Jack actually knows a thing or two about farming. Why can’t she desire Jack, Jack is someone she could have if she wanted. Ah, that’s why…

Happy to be out of New York, she has her own dark shame to escape having been involved in something called ‘The Millienail Experiment’, while trying complete her PH.D. program in Anthropolgy. This could be the perfect escape from her current bleak reality, this thing that Jack calls the “Grand Experiment”. If she nearly drowns in freezing water with the fragile Chloe, well it’s worth it. Here she can be invisible from the outside world and yet share profound intimacy with a chosen few. Her deepest desire is for someone to explain her to herself. Maybe they can!

The land begins to feel as much hers once she settles in with the others. Too, the sense of community she didn’t realize she had lacked is nearly enough to keep her warm through the cold nights, as is her hunger to be self-sufficient. Yet the relationships are not as they seem. Louisa and Beau aren’t new to the Homestead having worked the last year on it. But this is a “collective endevor” so why focus on that? Here they can sustain themselves, find meaning, not like the world they feel has nothing to offer them- educated and meandering, society treating their generation as if they created all the problems that is their inheritance. Little does she realize how much animosity Louisa feels for the local farmer whose land borders hers, farmers who grow genitcally engineered corn. Nor the trouble it will bring.

Beofre long Louisa begins to obsess over Chuck Larson, doing all she can to disrupt the farmer. Fennel, one of Beau’s girls from the collective is more than just a distraction. There is a bigger story than Mack knew, and soon after joining Beau and Louisa protesting fracking, she meets Mathew, the head of collectives and is privy to plans to stop Lakeview from successfully taking over land locally. Getting entangled with others wasn’t what they signed up for. There is a thin line between passionate causes and crimal acts. Through seasons of exhuasting work and fruitful harvest, the idle is disturbed by the infectious presence of the neighboring collective and it’s leader. Alongisde their own story is the tale of an early attempt at Utopia in the form of writings by a man named William Fulsome. The hardships aren’t that much different from the ones they too face. What will get them all in the end? Will it be the elements, their dreams or each other? It’s wise to remember that all families, whether self-made or not, have seeds of destruction and secrets they keep from others. Idealism is contagious, reality always creeps in…

Publication Date: July 2, 2019

Random House