This is one of the best thrillers I have read in a long time! The twist and turns in this novel really kept me guessing until the end!

When Naomi’s childhood attacker dies in prison, she goes back home to meet up with her best friends. Olivia has some new information she wishes to share with Naomi, and together with Cass the three friends revisit that day when Naomi almost didn’t make it out of the woods alive.

I really enjoyed how the story played out throughout the book. Marshall revealed bits of the story at a time so you really felt you were learning new information at the same time as the characters and could make the connections with them. I found Naomi to be a very likeable lead, and the audio reader did a great job making you feel a part of the story. Overall a very strong thriller and a great fast paced audiobook!

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for granting me a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for my honest review!

Wow - this book had so many twists and turns and just when I thought I figured it out, I was nowhere close! While long, this book kept me engaged the entire time and I found myself listening to the book whenever I could. The twists and turns intrigued me every time and kept me guessing at “who” did it and why. I highly recommend giving What Lies in the Woods a read immediately!

This was a great book. It had so many twists and turns. Just when I thought I solved the mystery of the guilty party, that theory was proven to be wrong. It keeps you guessing from beginning to end, I will definitely be looking for more books from this author.

The story was about friendship, the close ties, and the lies that causes pain. A tragic unforgettable event happened to 3 young girls years ago. The person responsible was sent to jail and later died in prison, The girls now grown women reunite after learning about the death in prison and discuss a secret they told about the tragedy years ago that wasn’t really true. One wants to tell the truth and tries to convince the others. However, they don’t agree and the girl wanting to reveal the truth ends up dead. One of the other girls is determined to find out what happened to her friend even if risks her own life.

What Lies In The Woods is the first book I’ve read from Kate Alice Marshall. This thriller delves into themes of strained childhood friendships, small town secrets, betrayal, and troubled pasts. Overall I enjoyed this one! What Lies In The Woods is a slow burn. The story is told through Naomi’s perspective and is told mostly in the present with sprinkles from the past to help move the story along. There were a few times where I thought I knew who did it but the twists and turns kept throwing me off course. I loved how the author wrote the deep complexities of each character and how she slowly unraveled secrets from the past. Definitely recommend picking this one up!

What Lies in the Woods

Wow. This was really good! I was immediately sucked into the story.

The narration was amazing. The storyline. Characters. Everything was set up perfectly to suck you in. I thought I had suspicions and yes some were correct with the twists that happen but I definitely did not expect the ending and how it all unfolded.

There are a lot of trigger warnings for this book so please keep that in mind and look them up before reading.

It was so easy to fall into this story. We have multiple timelines but it was easy to keep track.

Love this book! While it started off as one story that had been lived already and what seem like a story that was just coming back to find closure was nothing of the sorts. It had me captivated thinking there was always something els or why now after you have lived out and practically grew through it why do you have too open that womb again, but. To only find your self being wounded all over again worse than before. The lies the betrayal the friendships and the love and innocence ;to how twisted and cruel this world can be especially by those we hold so close to us. Must read

I quite enjoyed this one. Enough twists to keep the reader engaged. The pace was good straight from the start.
I thought the narrator was perfect for this story.

Reading Discussion Questions:
1. Is it better to put physical scars on display or cover them?
2. Have you stayed in contact with childhood friends? What has kept you connected?
3. What are some clues to let you know you’re being manipulated?
4. Is unmonitored free play good for kids or does it allow for bad things to happen?
Naomi, Olivia, and Cass grow up romping in the woods when Naomi is attacked and stabbed 17 times. After the serial killer the girls put away with their testimony and eyewitness identification dies in prison, Naomi returns home to see her friends and family. She starts realizing how much she was manipulated as a child. She was used by so many people including her best friends and father. As she unravels the past she learns the truth of how she was really almost murdered.

This #audiobbok 👏🏻🙌🏻👏🏻

10/10 recommend

“To believe is to hold dear, to cherish, to claim as a truth more fundamental than fact. I believed in magic. We all did.”

Twenty-two years ago, Naomi Shaw and her two best friends, Cassidy and Olivia, spent the summer roaming the woods, imagining a world of ceremony and wonder, believing in magic. They called it the Goddess Game. The summer ended suddenly when Naomi was viscously attacked. Miraculously, she survived her seventeen stab wounds and lived to identify the man who had hurt her. The girls’ testimony put away a serial killer, wanted for murdering six women. They were heroes.



And they were liars.

“You couldn’t let someone in without it breaking you, but you could choose the way you broke.”

I was given a widget of this audiobook from Macmillan Audio because I am obsessed with Karissa Vacker and I am not quiet about it 😂👏🏻. She narrates a book like almost no one else and I simply can’t get enough. Her voice. The way she differentiates the characters. Her tone. Just everything about her narration. She gives every single character a distinct and believable voice, both male and female, and in such a fluid way that you can actually imagine each one. It makes it very easy to follow along, especially during dialogue. Top notch!

This story itself was also great! I got lost in this town and with these characters, all the while trying to figure out who was lying, who was hiding, and who I could trust. And let me tell you, I did NOT see that ending coming. What a ride!

Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, Kate Marshall, and Flatiron Books for this copy. And thank you to Karissa Vacker for making these characters so believable and real!

WOW OH WOW ~ What a thriller!!!! I give this one a 4.5/5 - there were so so many layers and every time I thought I had everything figured out Kate Alice Marshall slapped me in my god damn face and said no ma'am - you don't!! SO good wow.

OMG! This one is certainly to be up there in my 2023 reads and it's still January.

Imagine the decisions you make at 11 years old have profound impacts on you in your thirties. Like, was that secret worth it? How can you not question what you saw, what you remembered, who you can trust?

"What Lies in the Woods" causes readers to think as they follow three women. One who was attacked and bears the scars to this day. One who mentally struggles to remain put together and independent. And one who is the mayor's daughter, has a prominent family, and landed on her feet. But the woods and their secrets keep them together, until it all begins to unwind.

I loves the contrasting females. I loved the suspense and intrigue and the twisting of characters. The perspectives this was written in gave readers an up close and personal look at the main character's psyche and it really propelled this to greater heights. I'm quickly becoming a Kate Alice Marshall fan after this one!

aomi is a survivor of an attempted murder. She survived being stabbed 17 times, and she and her friends pointed towards the man and helped him get arrested. She barely remembers what happened and doesn't remember the murderer's face, but she has always trusted her friends and their descriptions of the killer. Years later, her killer has died in prison, and a true crime podcaster has come along asking questions and poking holes in her testimony, and one of her friends Olivia has been calling her non-stop wanting to talk about what happened,

The story flashes back to the time before Naomi's attack, when she and her friends would play the Goddess Game and make sacrifices to a girl they have called Persephone.

This was really well done and very twisty. Definitely a fun listen. Thank you netgalley and macmillan audio for giving me an advanced review copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Karissa Vacker is an incredible narrator! I gravitated more to the audiobook version of this book — I also had the hard copy.

There were a lot of characters — and a lot of suspects. It was very dark (always fun for a thriller). I felt like things dragged a bit in the middle but the end was absolutely wild.

Wow, this was such a creepy and dreamlike read. A murder mystery with a true crime aspect dropped in made this a truly dynamic reading experience. At least ten times while reading this I thought I knew who the culprit was and yet, I was wrong. I might have figured a few of the twists out but I’m very impressed with the end reveal and the “wow” moments that rolled in, one after the other.

The narration by Karissa Vacker was excellent. She smoothly moved from young voices, to adult, and even adjusted for the male characters. It was incredibly impressive and made this listening experience so much richer.

This is my first by Marshall and I will definitely be reading more from her in the future.

Thank you Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for the #alc in exchange for an honest review!

“What Lies in the Woods” was a solid, slow-burning thriller. There are enough people making malicious choices that it was easy for there to be multiple suspects, leading to many wrong guesses on my part.

Naomi and her two best friends spent a summer believing in magic. Roaming the local woods, playing their “Goddess Game,” everything felt lighthearted and innocent enough — until Naomi ends up stabbed seventeen times and left near death. While her injuries lead her with little memory of what happened, when she awakes in the hospital, she is able to back up what her friends have already declared, that a local suspected serial killer was the man responsible for her attack. With her testimony, the man is sentenced to jail, where he dies of natural causes decades later.

On the tailwind of his death, Naomi finds herself reconnected to her friends, and wondering if she was really correct in her assumption that he was to blame — and haunted by the secret of the woods that she and her friends kept just between them until now. She begins to search for the truth, aided by a true crime podcaster, Ethan. Among many twists and turns, she finds out the truth in more ways than she bargained for.

I found this story well written, immersive, and easy to follow. I always appreciate a mystery where I can’t predict the end from chapter 1. In this case, there were so many directions the plot could have gone, that I was left satisfied the conclusion wasn’t predictable, but was plausible nonetheless.

Twenty two years ago, three eleven year old best friends used to play imaginary games in the woods. But on one horrible afternoon they were attacked, with Naomi’s testimony a serial killer was arrested. Now a podcaster is looking into the truth of their story and the girls are forced to confront what really happened to them in the woods.

This one was super pacey and insanely twisty. It played on some tropes in the thriller world that I don’t always love… but in this case, it all came together perfectly. The right clues are there, and while I guessed a few of the twists… How they came together in the end was a surprise for sure. This is the perfect read in one sitting type of thriller.

Thanks to Macmillian Audio for gifted access to this audiobook via Netgalley. I did go on to purchase a copy. All opinions above are my own.

Wow. I absolutely loved this. Firstly, thank you to Flatiron Books / Macmillan Audio for the audiobook review copy! Honestly, I might not have picked this up if it weren't for the publisher sending me the Netgalley widget so I'm incredibly thankful that they did! I can also credit my friend Megan for being a big Kate Alice Marshall fan because that helped nudge me into picking up a new author since I'm always a little hesitant of new thriller authors.

Okay, now the good stuff! This was my first Kate Alice Marshall book and it certainly won't be my last. The synopsis of the book really intrigued me but it was the way that everything was handled in the book that really had me enjoying it so much. I don't give out five stars lightly (or like... barely at all? I gave out two last year), but right from the start of the book, I really connected with the writing style. The dialogue flowed naturally and effortlessly, leading me into the lives of these characters without feeling like they were characters -- plus, there was a nice amount of banter that worked perfectly in. The characters just felt REAL. Not overly dramatic, totally believable, and really made me interested in their stories.

The storytelling and writing style really painted a picture for me and I was able to lose myself in the book. Although the plot is dark (three girls were rescued from the woods after an encounter with a serial killer when they were 11 and the story picks up a series of events related to this as they're adults), it wasn't overly done. I can be iffy about serial killer stories now with page after page of torture, abuse, and gore, which can be fine but usually it's overdone. WHAT LIES IN THE WOODS was just the perfect blend of bringing you into this storyline, focusing on the setting an atmosphere instead of having to hit you over the head with violence. It was exactly my vibe and I was here for every minute of it!

And the plotting -- hot damn. Kate Alice Marshall knows EXACTLY how to craft a detailed and dangerous web. We get a piece of the puzzle in the beginning of the book which knocks down one domino which knocks down the next, and so and so forth. There's always something happening in the book to keep the readers engaged so there aren't lengthy periods of time where the characters are just running around looking for clues. There's always a thread to follow and Naomi (the main character) keeps pulling on those threads until everything finally unravels. The book really packs some EXTRA punches in the last 25% with twist after twist. There were so many things I didn't see coming, a few that I pieced together as we were rolling along, and it was the perfect mix of surprise and satisfaction.

For my tastes, I can't say a single thing I would have changed. I absolutely loved this book from start to finish and I can't tell you the last time I've been so enchanted by a thriller from the very beginning. Thrillers are my main genre but it's been a long time since I've been so satisfied by a thriller book.

Audiobook Feedback: I really loved Karissa Vacker here! She also narrated Stacy Willingham's thrillers A FLICKER IN THE DARK and ALL THE DANGEROUS THINGS -- both of which I enjoyed -- as well as ALL GOOD PEOPLE HERE by Ashley Flowers and she's quickly becoming a new favorite narrator. I think that also really helped me click with the book very quickly! It was a voice and vibe that I really liked and I've really loved all of her narration.

If you liked this, read...
When I Was You
All the Dangerous Things

(3.5 / 5.0) What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall is a thriller mystery trope that felt very familiar in plot, for me. In it we meet three friends – Naomi, Cassidy, and Olivia. They all lived through a violent incident in the woods during their childhood that left Naomi, the main character, with physical and emotional scars. The man in prison for the crime is there because of their testimonies, and Naomi has returned to her hometown for the first time in years.

As Naomi works through the events of her childhood, and the new information she is beginning to remember as an adult, she realizes that she might have gotten a few things wrong. As she pulls at the thread of what really happened, it starts to unravel a truth that may put her safety at risk again.

I always struggle to review thrillers where the ending is obvious to me early on, and I had a strong guess on this one in the first 25% of the book. That said, I really enjoyed the writing and was propelled forward by that, still very interested in listening. For those looking for a dual-timeline, unreliable narrator thriller with clear answers in the ending, then this could be a good fit. If you are an avid thriller reader, you might pick up the clues a bit easily.

Many thanks to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for providing an early listening copy, I always appreciate you!

Content warnings: Violence, Sexual assault, Self-harm, Death, Mental illness

I loved this book. Even though I figured things out I was still hooked and read it on one sitting. Definitely recommend it

Although I had my suspicions about the whodunit aspect of this one, I was totally invested in how the story was unfolding. I think the author laid out lots of breadcrumbs throughout the book, and the direction of the plot made sense. There were a couple elements that were a bit more difficult to buy into (I was about to list them but I feel like it gives a bit too much away), but overall this is a decent thriller.