I could not even finish this one. I literally don’t even care what happens. The characters were just TOO intentionally unlikable for me.

It’s not the novel’s story.
This story has been told before.
It’s not that the plot has a structure of twists to keep the reader stumped and the ending held in expectation.
Although, early on, the reader is told not all is being revealed.
Mischa Thrace has written this novel with such an honest, authentic voice, a reader forgets the book is a work of fiction.
Whatever awards Mischa has or will receive are truly deserved.

I really liked how the characters are developed, and their secrets just start to trickle into the story. It was also cool to learn a little bit about the history of utopian communities as well. At times, the characters and their dialogue felt a little bit too much to me, but overall I liked it.

This is a perfect case of “it’s not you, it’s me.” This story had fantastic prose, and a clever narrative. It was pretty stylistic and literary, which I think a lot of people will really love and appreciate - but unfortunately that’s not my niche. Great story - the writing was just not for me personally.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was surprised at how much I liked this book (I did not have high expecations based on reviews aleady) but I was pleasantly surprised. Was it great? No, Was it awful? Also no. Was it enjoyable? I'm not sure if was supposed to be. Was it interesting? Yes, it was!

A group of 20 something year olds move to a isolated farm and start their own community to live off the grid. While at some points I wanted to reach into the book and smack the hell of some of the characters (Louisa!), but I'm also from a different generation than these characters. (OMG I'm so old!)

I enjoyed Mack's character and did find myself wondering at times why the hell she was with these people but it came mid book. I do wish that I knew earlier in the story, because while I liked the character, I didn't feel all that connected to her, until I found out what had happened. Knowing from the start of the book that things weren't going to end well and then finding out later what happened with her, was just sort of a let down for a odd reason. I think if I had known sooner about her past and the fact that things weren't going to end well, I may have connected to her more than I did. That being said, there is some potential though here.

I did hope this book gets on more look at by an editor before publication date for there is some more fine tuning that can take this ok book and make it a great book.

Thank you again for the ARC!

Unfortunately, this book was quite difficult to get into, and I had to quit reading about one quarter of the way through. Slowwwww. Superficial characters, boring plot.

I got through chapter 10, exactly a third of the way through, before giving up. Beyond a vague mention of possible ecoterrorism in their future, nothing happened. I briefly pondered whether it was written as satire before writing it off as just not my type of book, which is really saying a lot considering I read anything.

The bare bones of the story are fine, but every single one of the five are the epitome of obnoxious, preening, head-in-the-sand, boujee wackos. They use anachronistic language like “must”, “shall”, and “indeed” but are the shallowest, most naive characters I’ve ever had the misfortune to read. Not a single one of them has an ounce of a redeeming quality. If that was the intention, brava, but I just can’t read a book like this. If not, then I’d love to have a conversation with the author to really find out how she perceives these characters and how she intended they come across. This is basically the millennial communist’s manifesto so if that’s not your cup of tea, I’d recommend passing. I have not given a book a 1 star rating maybe ever, but I hated the characters that much.

The descriptions of nature took me back to my youth in upstate NY. I enjoyed the pull of waiting to find out what happened to Mack and thoroughly enjoyed reading about the independent, commune, homestead-lifestyle. I kept thinking that this was taking place in an earlier time, and was snapped back into the current details such as iPhone, social media and discussion of The Millennial Experiment. Perhaps I was so engrossed as to picture myself in this story. I also loved the overlapping characters and storyline from Dead Letters! Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

I struggled through this one for two main reasons 1) having the characters entitled millennials makes them almost completely unlikable and certainly unrelatable. 2) the storyline dragged along and needs a little tightening up.

I’m not sure I’m really the core audience for this one. I see reviews have been a mixed bag so if the description grabs you, give it a go! I didn’t dislike it, hence the 3 stars, yet I had been hoping for a deeper connection.

A group of 20-somethings trying to escape the problems of the world retreat to the woods to create a 1960s-style commune in upstate New York. Unfortunately, their problems and those of the world follow them. The characters are well developed but the book overall is lackluster. The "big reveals" are bland to the point of being inconsequential. The additional storylines around the previous commune inhabitants and Mack's "project" are convoluted and don't add to the story. I put down the book and wondered what I should take away for it. Was the point that over-privileged millennials are the worst? Perhaps that you can never really escape your problems? Or maybe it was simply that living by your ideals is hard and boring and still come with negative consequences? I'm not quite sure, and regardless, it was a bit of a boring slog for any of these morals.

Between 3 and 4 stars, rounded up. We Went to the Woods really suffers from the blurb’s comparison to The Secret History and The Immortalists; it is really not even close to being in the league of those two novels (my favorite ever, and my favorite of 2018) - the comparison made me intrigued to read it, but also made me judge it harshly up to the standards of those books, which it falls far short of.

All that said, I ended up being surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. Sure, it reads like a college student doing her best Donna Tartt impression, and sure, sometimes the narrator uses words and phrases no American would ever say, and sure, the millennial crew who goes into the woods outside of Ithaca, New York to start an intentional community based on subsistence farming are SO pretentious you can’t possibly imagine humans actually speaking to each other this way, but the story is solid. The characters grew on me (especially Jack and Chloe, and by the end, even the insufferable Louisa), and I found myself dreading whatever unfortunate end was going to befall Mack and her friends - as you know from the first chapter that this doesn’t end well.

I hope this book gets one more pass by an editor before it goes to distribution, as it could use a little work to really shine. But it’s a good one, one of my favorites of 2019 so far, and I will definitely be recommending it to others. We Went to the Woods will be particularly interesting to anyone who enjoys character driven novels and readers interested in cults, intentional communities, or subsistence farming. I always enjoy books that send me down side research roads, and this book is impossible to read without googling utopian communities and the Oneida Community in particular. I’m grateful to Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to read an advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion!

Posted 4/2 to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2759417073

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The description of this book pulled me in but in the end it just wasn't for me. I couldn't connect with the characters and I found the plot slow and unrealistic.

I think this book greatly demonstrates the debates that the current youth generation is going through. Being torn between accepting consumerist and comfort of life that destroy the planet and not knowing how to live any differently. I enjoyed this novel for its story and how it developed. Especially I enjoyed conclusions Mack drew for herself and where she went after her trip to the woods. I found some of the foreshadowing overhyped, but I think for someone in their 20s-30s they would be perfect.

If you find an idea of living off the grid interesting, wonder about communal living and enjoy drama I would recommend it to you.

We Went to the Woods is just what it says, a group of people in the woods. Take a few millennials with zero life experience and entitlement issues and send them forth to live off the land. It's an old idea with many names-commune, cult, intentional community. By any name, it's not plausible in my mind for this group of people. The main character is already screwed up and self centered because she defines her value based on social media/reality television shows. Seriously? They are doomed before the story unfolds. It's too many different intentions trying to live as one. The living is harder than expected, and there are a host of other issues. Overall, I found the entire concept too cliche to garner much intrest. I wanted to like it, but it's never that simple. The characters are not likeable and the story is contrite. It's an unfortunate miss for me. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was an interesting book. A group of 20-somethings move to an isolated plot of land and work together to start their own commune where they grow their own food and live off the grid. Thinks become a little complicated when it's discovered that a couple of the members dabble in ecoterrorism against companies they believe to be polluting the environment. I think I loved the idea of this book more than the execution, though I did enjoy it for the most part. I think I really leaned into the wish-fulfillment of working together to create a community and family, but I was left a little cold by some of the characters (they felt like spoiled brats who were participating in a social experiment) and the ecoterrorism plot fell a little flat for me, especially since the story is told from the POV of a character who has no idea what is going on. Overall, I think i'd give this 3/5 stars because I enjoyed the overall story and thought it was an interesting concept. Thanks to Net Galley and PRH for the advance copy!

I tried. The story develops S-L-O-W-L-Y. It felt like a good chunk of it was how they were going to develop their woods lifestyle. Can't you just go out there and do it? After the questions about if they needed wi-fi, I gave up. I really wanted to like this book and at least finish it, but it was not for me.

What more could you want? A mystery, a thriller, twin sisters, this novel has it all. I couldn’t stop reading this. If you have been thinking about creating a compound this book might convince you otherwise.

After a public humiliation that isn't revealed until mid-book, protagonist Mack meets up casually with a group of four others, goes off with them to live off the grid. I think I've read too many of these pressure cooker situations to be either intrigued or elucidated by any new treatment. T. C. Boyle's Drop City covered the same ground, and better.

*Thanks to the author and publisher for an ARC in return for a fair and honest review.
When you read as much as I do, it's difficult to find a book with a premise you haven't read many times before, however Dolan-Leach's "We Went to the Woods" managed to hit that nail right on the head. A young woman, fresh off a reality television show (and in public disgrace for an error in judgment made on air) chooses to follow four new friends to the Homestead. Their foray into earthy-crunchy communal living is harder than it seems, and the neighboring group, known as "The Collective", is not at all what it first appears. This is an interesting look at how personalities, philosophies, politics and sex affect interpersonal relationships when living in such close quarters. I found this to be a very thought-provoking novel.

Five people set out to build a “homestead,” wanting to live off the land and their own labors. Narrated by Mack (Makenzie), the story unfolds slowly, and along the way there is a lot of talk about farming and raising animals and clean living and “free love.” The characters are all rather pompous and unlikable, and there is a whole “secret” about something in Mack’s past which has disgraced her and caused her to drop out of society. The casual way she becomes involved with this group seems implausible, and I never really connected with any of the characters. There were many threads to the plot which were not developed fully enough, and there were way too many “issues” brought up but never fully developed: pesticides, fracking, cults, mental illness, and our reliance on technology to name just a few. I wanted to like this book more than I did, but I never felt fully invested in the drama or in the characters, and was disappointed by the distance I felt because of the many plot lines.