Read if you like
🌌 Atmospheric Vibes
⏳ Slow Burn Thrillers
🥛 Missing Kids Stories

This one is so freaking creepy! I absolutely love when thrillers get me so creeped out and this one succeeded at just that!

The atmospheric vibes and setting really sold me with all the vibes that were introduced that made me enjoy this one so much more!

This one also has some supernatural plot points that added to the story, the pace, and the thrill of the ride!

If you love small town slow burn thrillers I recommend checking this one out as it checked so many boxes for me! Thank you to the publisher for my ARC in exhange for my review!

Thankyou to Netgalley, the author and publisher for allowing me to read this ARC.
This book was eerie and creepy and i felt like the author did a great job setting the scene for this book.
This book was very interesting and suspenseful. Kept me guessing and on edge. Small town drama with you wanting more.
I loved the pace and found the story to flow easily and keep my interest right until the last page! This was my first Katherine Greene book and won't be my last!
Thanks again.
5/5 stars

The Woods are Waiting is a cozy small town spooky story. I love anything involving witches and woods so I knew I would love this book after reading the description. The writing is really great and helps you paint a picture in your head. Great book!

The Woods are Waiting by Katherine Greene was a really creepy story! Cheyenne has returned home to her small hometown in Virginia in the Appalachians. A child has gone missing and it is eerily similar to when 3 young children went missing and were found dead in the woods when Cheyenne was younger. There is a legend in the town that the Hickory Man lives out in the woods, and will take children and kill them. Cheyenne’s mom is somewhat of a witch/seer/mystical person. According to people in the town, she has been acting more and more strange since the latest child went missing. Cheyenne runs into her childhood friends, Natalie and Jack and they start trying to figure out what is going on.
I enjoyed the small town ominous vibe of the story. The chapters alternated between Cheyenne and Natalie’s point of view. It was interesting to see how different they saw certain events I felt like the ending was a little bit rushed. However, I thought the overall story and ending was really good. I will definitely read books by this author again. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

This was spooky and chilling in places, set in an eerie atmosphere in the woods. The author does such a good job of setting the scene and it was another enjoyable one.
I really enjoyed the writing and setting and the mysterious superstitions around the woods really added to the intrigue. I look forward to more by this author.

Sad to say but I just didn't love this book. Seemed a bit predictable from the get go to me...despite a bunch of shady characters that seemed pretty guilty lol. I'm also one for a mystery without the romance and I learned pretty quickly there was an elusive love interest. Certainly has a strong taste of small town paranoia (it's a real thing)! Will give her works another try...maybe this a one off that just didn't work for me.

Wow! What a thrilling novel! I read this pretty quickly because of how interesting the plot is. I wasn’t surprised by the big plot twist, but that never factors into my opinion about a book negatively since I secretly love feeling like I was smart enough to figure it out! The protagonists that we hear from are realistic characters who are full of good backstory of character development. I loved the huge overarching question of whether these disappearances and deaths are happening because of something supernatural or because of a human serial killer, and I also loved the very last sentence of the novel and what it implies. Overall, I greatly enjoyed this book and will be recommending it! I also look forward to reading more from this author!

Fun premise, but I hoped author would do something more interesting with it.

I really liked the idea of long generation family who has a notorious reputation, of having some special power which ties them to the city. That makes them both hated and cherished in the community, but odd and feared in both cases. All the stuff about lore of the locale and rituals that are known and make sense only to denizens of Blue Cliff. Cheyenne having to deal with that kind of generational burden is heavy enough without her mother's declining mental health. As a background- both for character development and as a setting- it was definitely the most intriguing part of the story for me.
And I also liked the the premise. As cliche as it was, I think that things that are used so often because they are good become cliche. I read on because I wanted to know what happened to Cheyenne and to see about her encounters with her mother and friends she left behind. Adding into that the Hickory Man, the urban legend who supposedly takes children away, reminded me a bit of what Jen Williams is doing with her A Dark and Secret Place or Games for Dead Girls, but in a more skillful and experienced way.

Which brings me to things I wasn't so keen on. In some things it was painfully obvious this is a debut novel. You start this book with the notion that Cheyenne is the main character or at least the one everything revolves around, but soon she simply falls out of focus and the book starts jumping from pov to pov only to move forward the plot. There is some romance and bff hurdle thrown in, but there was no character development at all because conflicts and resolving the conflicts is surface level, dialogue is without any depth and relationship issues is something they barely mention and jump right into moving the mystery of disappeared children further. I am a character reader, so this is important to me, and this book is hallmark movie level of complexity when it comes to characterization.
Hence, since I wasn't invested into characters and their fate, the only thing that kept me engaged was the mystery. And it was paint-by-the-numbers, predictable one with final kidnapping scene and confrontation where the villain explain their motive.

It was a quick read, but not a very memorable one.

The Woods Are Waiting by Katherine Greene
Cheyenne grew up in the mountain town of Blue Cliff, Virginia adjacent to woods her family had lived on for generations. Local legends warn children of the Hickory Man that resides in the woods and preys on the young. Cheyenne's mother has devoted her life to protecting the children and the town through herbs, salts, and spells but Cheyenne doesn't completely believe in the tales and superstition. Five years earlier, the bodies of three children were found in the woods. Unable to cope with her mother's escalating behavior, Cheyenne leaves town. Now a fourth child has gone missing and Cheyenne returns home. Cheyenne's mother believes the Hickory Man has claimed the children but Cheyenne believes a resident of the town is to blame.

I really enjoyed this one! The story is told by alternating viewpoints of Cheyenne and her childhood best friend. You meet several of the townspeople and learn their dirty secrets. The author does a great job of creating a claustrophobic small-town atmosphere that instills a sense of dread. There are a lot of suspects and the ending was not exactly jaw-dropping but was still somewhat of a surprise. My only complaint is that it seemed like some of the townspeople didn't fully pay for their crimes at the end and there were a few loose ends. Overall, I liked this one and would recommend it. Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

This book was very interesting and suspenseful. Kept me guessing and on edge. Small town drama with you wanting more.

✨Ｂｏｏｋ Ｒｅｖｉｅｗ✨

The Woods Are Waiting 📚 by Katherine Greene

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
.
.
.
I enjoyed the premise of a childhood nursery rhyme centered around a boogeyman - and the small town attributing the deaths of children over the span of decades to this boogeyman. An eerie combination of a huge, foreboding forest and small town vibes makes for an interesting backdrop to this story that leaves you guessing of what's really happening in this small town.

Thank you to @netgalley for this #advancedreaderscopy!
.
.
.
#justread #bookstack #booklovers #alwaysreading #readersofinstagram #bookreview #instareads #goodreads #bookworm #bookaddict #readersofig #bookreviewer #bookaddict #bookstagram

I found this to be quite slow moving. The story felt like it dragged on. There were a few twists but that didn’t make me enjoy the book any more.

When I read the synopsis for this one I was pretty excited to read it. Unfortunately, this one fell pretty flat for me.
I felt that the character development just wasn't there in this one. I just didn't really like or care about any one particular character. That makes for a hard read.

With that said, the plot didn't do much for me either. I really don't like a DNF book, and did trudge through this one but it wasn't easy to do. By the later third it picked up quickly but then i felt like there were holes all over the place.

Sadly, this one just didn't make my list for books that i really recommend. But, that doesn't mean someone else won't love it.

3.5/5
Five years ago, in Blue Cliff Virginia, three children were killed. This isn't the town's first time with children dying mysteriously. However, these three were clearly murdered. They are sure they found the culprit, and the killing stop. However, in present day, when another child goes missing, Cheyenne is called back home after leaving five years ago, to help her mother who is seemingly getting worse. Her mother is convinced this is the work of folk legend, Hickory Man. However, Cheyenne thinks this might be a more human threat.

For a debut author, I think this was pretty solid. It took a while to pick up, and I wish there had been more Cheyenne-Natalie investigation. I feel like the second half of the book should have been extended more and the first half could have been shorter. I am glad though (SPOILER AHEAD) that it was not a supernatural culprit. I feel like that would've have been a cop out. I think the whodunit was surprising in a good way - as in I didn't see it coming.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

daaaaamn that was some scary stuff right there! the atmosphere was eerie and creepy which now that I know about it probably wasn't a good idea to read at night. the small town setting was perfect for the story and truly set the vibe. The pacing was slow but not dragging if that makes any sense and the characters were sooo interesting. I still have some questions that were never answered which is why this book isn't perfect in my opinion. a solid 4 stars

The synopsis for The Woods are Waiting sounded exactly like something I would enjoy. I love small town superstitions and lore, so I was incredibly excited to start this. Unfortunately, it fell a bit flat for me. I didn't hate it, there were just too many things that irked me to be able to rate this higher.

Firstly, this reads very YA to me. I actually had to check a few sites to ensure it was Adult Horror. Don't get me wrong, I love and regularly read YA Horror (I was raised on Fear Street books!) and would have given this more leeway if it were. The characters come off pretty immature, as well as rather one-note. I didn't connect with anyone, save for Natalie who I think we get more insight into. I just didn't like Cheyenne; imo she's a pretty terrible friend and daughter to just abandon them, and go radio silent for 5 years. Her skeptical view was a nice counterbalance but I found her a bit too emphatic with it.

The book is a bit slow-paced, but I love a good slow burn, and I think it was to build up the tension as the townspeople get more and more agitated and riled up. I loved this, it was well done. I think most of us have seen or can imagine what a group of people are capable of once mob mentality sets in. It was effective for me. My problem lies with the reveal. It comes on suddenly but then drags out for so long. Our killer goes on and on and on about just how much he loves killing kids. Like in movies when the villain stands there with their "why I did this" diatribe long enough for someone to save the day. It was trite. I guessed the killer really early on, and it was implied Connie did as well...but she just ignored it? Ummm what? Too many plot holes for me. And the last line was confusing. Like either it was The Hickory Man or a living, breathing evil person. By this point we know it's the latter, we know who's been murdering these children for decades, so a suggestion of there *also* being something supernatural in the woods is silly...again, unless this was YA.

Otherwise, it was an enjoyable quick read. I just really wish this were YA or whatever is between YA and Adult. New Adult? I certainly would have rated it higher. As it is, I recommend this book to reader's who love campfire tales of something spooky in the woods.

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the e-ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fantastic read! I loved the pace and found the story to flow easily and keep my interest right until the last page! This was my first Katherine Greene book and wont be my last! Bravo!

This was a creepy, cloying and claustrophobic thriller that took you on a journey from the first page. Classic return to childhood homes town with dark past made fresh with interesting characters and eerie storytelling. Definitely a page turner.

Thriller has to be the the genre I read the least but I have committed in trying to rrad more of it this year. I am glad I picked this out from the bunch to get started.

The author created this setting and characters in such a way that the reader is involved. Sure, some of the phrasing is a bit wonky but the thought process behind more than made up for it.

As someone who lives in the south, it's always interesting to read books that take place here.

I'd say this book made me feel eerie. I wasn't scared, but kind of that feeling when someone is watching you? There was too much time spent in repetitive exposition, and the second half of the book wasn't quite enough to save it.