I would have loved to give feedback on this title, however when I was ready to read it (Wednesday June 7, 2023) it was no longer on my Kindle and since it had been archived (prior to publication?!) I could not attempt to download it again. The book sounded amazing and I wish that I could have read it.

I am disappointed that the publisher would archive this title before it was even published, not to mention that I had already downloaded the title (that's the only way it moves from the "Start Reading" tab to the "Give Feedback" tab in NetGalley) and it should have been available in my Amazon content library. Whether the issue was with Amazon or with NetGalley, I am sitting here in June, ready to devour this novel, and have been failed on both fronts. I am very disappointed.

Blue Cliff is a small Appalachian town known as the town that “gobbles up” children because of the number of them who have gone missing in the woods and been found dead over the years. When she graduated high school, Cheyanne couldn’t wait to leave the town and her eccentric mother who believed in the legend of the Hickory Man who stalked the woods and perpetuated a number of superstitions to keep him away. Natalie had been Chey’s best friend and Jack her boyfriend. When she left Blue Cliff, she also abandoned them. Now, five years later when yet another child has gone missing after the assumed killer had been set free because found evidence exonerated him, Chey is called home by the police chief, a family friend, to tend to her mother who is getting more and more bizarre. The town is boiling over in anger at the release of the presumed killer, yet Chey and her two friends believe him to be innocent. Will they put their own lives in danger trying to seek the truth?

This is a great thriller debut by author Katherine Greene. The story is told from two POVs and takes place mostly in the present, although there is some going back in time as characters reflect on their earlier history. It is a slow burn that is atmospheric and spooky. The rituals that some of residents of the small town follow to keep their children safe from the Hickory Man are no different from superstitious practices that many people preserve. Chey’s mother’s belief in herbs, poppets, and other practices have foundations in so many cultures. Some may think they know the truth early in the read, but that doesn’t take away from an engrossing read and it may not be the entire story!

This one definitely kept me reading!

I really loved the characters and I loved the storyline. The end wrapped up not in the way I had hoped, but the rest of the book was so good it didn't really matter!

Cheyenne Ashby is called back to her hometown in the Appalachian foothills, told her eccentric mother “isn’t doing well,” in the wake of the disappearance of a young child from town. The thing is, the disappearance the latest in a string of incidents going back to the town’s founding and the Ashbys have always been charged with keeping the town “safe,” using old superstitions and folk magic to help heal the town and keep whatever lurks in the woods at the town’s edge at bay. And the town respects her knowledge. So Cheyenne reluctantly returns after a five-year absence, to face her mother, her past, and the ghosts she fled.

This book was great, because if you grew up in a small town, you absolutely get the idea that is expressed here, where everyone knows you, your family and your business, going way back. The author got that vibe right, because it wasn’t overdone, like in a cheap Hallmark movie kind of way, but in a subtle, you can’t go out to the bar without running into people you both have to say hi to and want to avoid way.

Anyway, the main mystery was insanely creepy. I can’t imagine living in a town where children randomly disappear and then turn up dead. How can people live like that?! But it’s like the spell of this town that keeps a hold on these people and it’s up to Cheyenne and her friends to figure our what’s going on. And when they do - whoa! Be prepared for some shocking and crazy stuff. Like I said, it’s creepy as heck and will have you checking the locks.

The subplots with the two girls (Natalie and Cheyenne) and their personal issues were also really interesting and gave some really good perspective into the dynamics of the town, which has just been scarred by its history. So have the both Natalie and Cheyenne, and we also get to see the extent of that.

Overall this was a really intense and interesting book I would recommend to anyone looking for a great thriller. It’s perfect for a creepy night in!

One of the main plot points in this book is children being murdered, which is usually a no-go for me, but it actually didn't bother me too much. The book was creepy, dark, and the ending wasn't a big surprise for me, but I overall really enjoyed it. The dual perspective didn't really give any huge differences since they were on the same side. Read this in one weekend and give it 4 stars.

Blue Cliff is famous, and not for anything good. For hundreds of years, children have gone missing.

Cheyenne Ashby returns home to Blue Cliff after a frantic call from the police chief. Her mother isn't doing well and it's time for Cheyenne to finally come back. The tension in the town is high, another child is missing. Was it the recently released accused murderer from five years prior, or is it the Hickory Man, the dark entity that lives deep in the woods?

Katherine Greene has written a fast moving, dark thriller about small towns and things that go bump in the night. It's claustrophobic, it's atmospheric, and it's terrifying as all the pieces start falling into place.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I really enjoyed the characters in this book and feel like they had so much promise but they weren’t fleshed out enough for me to truly get invested in what happened to them. This is a mystery with sone supernatural and witchcraft touches set in a small secluded town. I think the plot had good bones but the execution fell short.

In the tradition of Lisa Jewell, this was excruciatingly boring. I gave up before the halfway mark. The pace was slow and the trope is overused.

The Woods are Waiting by Katherine Greene

Dark, creepy, unsettling story filled with local myth and legend that sees superstition filled townsfolk battling to keep their offspring safe from The Hickory Man.

What I liked:
* The woods as a character in the story
* The idea of using that beliefs can have a huge impact on a community
* Cheyenne, Natalie, and Jack – childhood friends that find themselves dealing with a sinister situation when they come together again after being apart for five years
* The plot, pacing, setting, and writing
* That all the mysteries and threads of the story are tied up neatly at the end of the story
* That even though I read the end and thought about not reading the middle, I am glad I read it all

What I didn’t like:
* Who and what I was meant not to like
* Thinking about how easily some can snuff out the lives of others
* After finishing the book, I wondered what Cheyenne had been doing for the years she had been away. I wondered if I had missed it or if it was missing from the book.

Did I enjoy this book? Yes
Would I read more by this author? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and Crooked Lane for the ARC – This is my honest review.

4-5 Stars

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this book!

Creepy! That is the first word that comes to my mind when I think back on this book. It was creepy. Eerie as well. Greene did a great job creating the atmosphere of this book as a backdrop to the story. It definitely had southern gothic vibes as well, ancient history, southern state, rural communities...really definitely had a feel to it.

This book had some twists and turns in it, which I enjoy in a mystery book, and it definitely was one that made you think. The characters were compelling, and I think Chey was my favorite POV character. I liked Natalie as well, and I thought Greene did a good job in crafting the relationships between the characters.

I will admit, I guessed the end -- however that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book. I was suitably creeped out by the end of the book.

One thing I will note there weren't too many scenes, but there were some moderate descriptions of gore in this book, but it wasn't bad, and it served a purpose.

I love books that twine the past with the present, and this book certainly catered to those desires, and I'm pleased to say this will make an excellent horror/mystery read for fans of either genre.

Thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for providing this title in exchange for an honest review!

“The woods are waiting” (2023) is an upcoming mystery thriller with horror elements by Katherine Greene. Set in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, there’s Blue Cliff, a town that seems to gobble up children, where the Hickory Man lives and people look after one another. It’s been five years since Cheyenne left home, after the bodies of three children were found in the woods and a flesh-and-bone murderer was convicted. But when her mother’s mental health seems to deteriorate following the disappearance of another child, Cheyenne comes back to take care of her and face once again the gruesome history and sinister superstitions of her town.

I picked this book for the eerie vibe - woods, mountains, superstitions, mysterious deaths? Hell yeah. Told in a dual, first person POV, we follow Cheyenne and her former best friend, Nathalie - so we get the perspective of someone who left and someone who stayed in town.

There’s this constant push and pull about whether the town believes in the Hickory Man or not that keeps you second-guessing about the nature of the book, and I really enjoyed that aspect. The author mentions that she incorporated superstitions based on her own experiences growing up by the Appalachians, and she managed to create something creepy and mythical, while also incorporating real human horror.

I love it when a book keeps me guessing, and this one definitely did. But I also love it when I can actually predict the ending, and I look back and the hints were there, which again, this one did. And yet it still got an "Oh!" from me at the end. By comparison, though, it felt like the characters had a delayed reaction to some revelations, which was maybe not helped by the use of flashbacks in the middle of the chapters.

Without spoiling it, I will say that the Big Bad’s speech was a little too self-aware, too much like “the patriarchy made me do it!”, which is not a bad conclusion for the reader to walk away with, but the way it was delivered felt clunky, and there was too much exposition.

The tight friendship between Cheyenne, Nathalie and Jack, as well as the theme of found family, was a really nice aspect of the book. One thing that I didn’t love in this sense, however, was that there is a (fade-to-black) sex scene: I can guess at what the author was trying to show with it, but it felt very out of place at that point in the story, for those characters in particular.

I would also have liked to see more of Nathalie’s insight about her relationship with Hunter. She lets him walk all over her, and it’s explained as she was raised like that, and it’s her personality… but since it’s told in the first person, once again it feels like too much unearned self-awareness.

Overall, this was a surprising, slow-burn mystery that will make me wary of entering any woods for a while!

3.5 stars.
"Watch out for his rough fingers, his eyes as red as blood, whisper a prayer, you'll need them there, as he pulls you into the mud."

(Netgalley ARC review)
Pros: Appalachian spooks! Loved the idea of the nursery rhyme horrors.
The writing is good in parts. The spooks were good in parts. Towards the end I couldn't put the book down. The creepy records are good and any scenes in the woods. Loved the connecting of memories to final outcomes. Good weaving of events and motives.

Cons: Many characters to keep track of in this village, but not enough time spent on each to really anchor their presence (it felt like the focus kept swapping too quickly). The 2-person POV blurred together as one voice (I think a stronger distinction of character personality, dialogue and attributes could have helped). Romance in unlikely traumatic scenes felt forced. I needed the story to move along around 40%, it's heavy in dialogue. There may have been some easy hints too early. The ending stretched for too long, very heavy in dialogue again. Narration at the end of the main characters thoughts broke the chilling event that was taking place.

Overall, it was an OK read! I enjoyed parts. I would have loved some editing, more action, less dialogue, and more atmospheric presence (utilising more of the environment, sounds, sights, senses, feelings, textures etc). I just love any book on Appalachian horrors! This book had promise, just needed some edits.

Thank you to Netgalley, Crooked Lane Books, and Katherine Greene for this advanced copy.

When Shailene Ashby gets a call from the local sheriff in the town she grew up in She almost didn’t answer but unfortunately she did he tells her she must come home immediately her mom needs her another child went missing and she is worse than ever! The reason she moved away was to get away from her mom‘s “superstitions“ and crazy ideas but despite that Shy loads up her car and head back home. When she arrives she soon learns her childhood best friends Natalie and Jackson were looking after her mom along with the local sheriff. Although most people in town think her mom is crazy it’s only when they don’t need her to ward off their own superstitions her town has been national news more than once for missing children and win the person most people think is the killer gets released from jail in another child goes missing the town is up in arms and news crews flood her small town. She is also surprised to hear the love of her life Jackson is still single and her other childhood best friend Natalie is engaged to the jerk Hunter who is also a police and trying to find what happened to Lil Dakota. Before it’s over Shy’s Family secrets will be known to her in the bogeyman she fear in the world her whole life will become all too real. This is a lame summary for such an awesome horror story. This is a book I will be recommending for years to come it starts off peeking your curiosity and doesn’t let up until the end and OMG what a freaking ending I did not see that coming… At all! It is books like this that make me wish I had a blog with a huge following so I can tell people you definitely need to read this book because if you’re reading this review contemplating getting this book… GET IT! If you love horror stories then you’ll definitely love The Woods Are Waiting by Catherine Green you will not be disappointed. There is intrigued deception monsters serial killers and family secrets and it is so so good! I received this book from NetGalley and crooked Lane books but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

This review will be posted on May 28, 2023 to: https://instagram.com/amandas.bookshelf

This was intriguing, but ok. The pacing felt uneven and the first three-quarters was so much SLOWER than the last quarter. The mystery was good, mixing ghastly child murders with local folklore and possible horror elements. Eagle eyed readers will identify the villain early on, like I did, but that didn't detract from enjoying the novel. But, the pacing issue was a huge one for me. #TheWoodsAreWaiting Rating: somewhere between 😐 / meh, it was ok AND 🙂 / liked it
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This book is scheduled for publication on July 11, 2023. Thank you @crookedlanebooks for providing me this digital ARC via @NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a really entertaining read - I flew through it and didn’t want to put it down. I was so intrigued in this atmospheric small town mystery and couldn’t stop reading until I got to the bottom of it with our main characters.

However, the big reveal didn’t leave me completely satisfied. Loose ends were tied up but I definitely felt like it didn’t have the impact it intended to. Also, the dialogue didn’t seem genuine or natural. Still - a fast and entertaining read!

Oh this was creepy!! Kids have been going missing for years in this small town in Virginia, the woods are a dangerous place to be. The locals all know this and believe in the Hickory Man, who lives there and preys in the young. They follow certain rules to try to keep themselves safe….but another child has gone missing.

5 years ago, Chey Ashby left town, vowing to never return. But this latest missing child has the town freaking out again and her mother needs her. So she heads back and is thrown into the madness once again. Along with her best friend Natalie, they begin to uncover the towns secrets.

This was such a fast read for me. It was atmospheric and gave me goosebumps reading about the creepy woods. Evil lurked there and people kept going in!! It was making me nervous!

A fantastic debut that I couldn’t stop reading.

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books for the early copy to read. Highly recommend.

𝒀𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒊𝒏𝒏𝒐𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒌𝒆𝒆𝒑 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒔𝒂𝒇𝒆. 𝑭𝒐𝒐𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒈.

Cheyenne Ashby has returned to her hometown of Blue Cliff, Virginia, leaving the safety of her tiny Roanoke apartment behind. It was survival that made her flee to begin with, but the Police Chief is adamant that his hands are full ever since a little boy has gone missing and he cannot divide his time by dealing with her mother Connie, who has always been a force to be reckoned with. Amidst drying herbs and superstitions, her once fierce, strong mother looks more like a shriveled madwoman. Shamed for staying away for so long, she hadn’t realized how bad things had gotten, how damaged her mother is. Immediately she wonders if the missing boy is the reason she has lost her grip. She warns Cheyenne, “Don’t go into the woods, and, “I have felt him coming” for months. Already Cheyenne is placating her mother, and taking the object she slips into her hand for protection, but it is anger she feels with its weight. These beliefs of Connie’s ruined her mother’s entire life. Her words, to anyone else, sound like mad ravings, but there is no denying that standing in the woods, they feel like nightmares being invited back in. Her mother’s intuitions terrorized her childhood, and birthed resentment. There was enough fear growing up, with the stories of the children who the woods swallowed, who would never come home, decade after decade but where other parents shielded their children, her mother fed the fire of fear. It was only to protect her! Cheyenne had tried to escape her, so it wouldn’t ruin her own future and yet here she is, back again, about to be swallowed by her duty.

The ‘dirty truths’ (posters of missing children) stare out at her when she goes into town, a stark reminder of the towns darkness, some as old as fifty years. Layer upon layer of grief, of horrific mystery. It is a cycle, one she herself was caught up in, her reason for leaving years ago when the bodies of three children were found, and a man was put away for it. The town itself, like any other, has its strange characters but with the exoneration of suspected murderer Jasper Clinton, they are starting from scratch. Who is taking the children from Hickory Woods?

The novel is shared by Natalie’s perspective, Cheyenne’s childhood best friend. Heartsore that she was easily cast aside, she wants to reject Cheyenne, but it’s not in her nature. In her absence, Natalie, like the rest of the town, has checked in on Connie. Natalie is still defending her friend, even if she deserves the grief others want to dish out. Then there is Jackson, the boy who loved Cheyenne, and still seems to carry a flame. Waiting for her too, though, is the dreaded Hickory Man. She cannot stop the recurring dream, that has only grown stronger with her return home.

The Appalachian Mountain town is tied to the old ways, has taught their children how to protect themselves, often with talismans. Whether it really works or not, the woods and whatever beast or evil lurks, is enough to make the people cling to any form of protection they can, praying their child won’t be snatched. What Cheyenne sees as her mother’s lost mind, Connie swears is her job, to save the children and parents of Blue Cliff. The Chief can’t do it. It angers Cheyenne that her mother believes in such nonsense, but she knows better than to try and fight her. Diving deeper into the mystery, could her ancient superstitions be right? Not even the FBI has answers, in all these years.

Her mother has filled Cheyenne’s old scrapbook with articles about all the missing children, why? Connie is adamant it is so they will never forget. Her mother is obsessed and it is draining the life out of her. Is the town insane, feeding this belief of the woods and the Hickory man, his hunger for blood? He is just as ingrained, rooted in the town as the trees. Whatever the truth, something is coming, and she is not sure who to trust or whether she will escape this time.

This was a decent read, and I only wish we had more time with Connie in her earthy, superstitious glory. I wish the book had been told from Connie’s perspective, that would have engaged me more, but it was still worth reading.

Publication Date: July 11, 2023

Crooked Lane Books

I was unable to finish this book and thus will not be posting a full review. I found the story incomprehensible but also languishing to the point of boredom. Thank you for the opportunity.

This was a slow burner, with great characters and setting. The only thing I guessed the culprit early and I like unpredictable books so it took a bit of shine of the book for me.

Cheyenne returns to her hometown of Blue Cliff after five years. Blue Cliff is known as the town where children go missing and their bodies turn up in the creepy woods surrounding the town. The citizens of Blue Cliff are all superstitious, even citing a nursery rhyme that cautions about the horrors of the woods.

Upon her return, Cheyenne reunites with her childhood bestie, Natalie. Cheyenne quickly learns that another child has gone missing. Cheyenne is transported to the past and is forced to relive the horrors of why she left Blue Cliff.

This book was boring. I found myself wishing for it to be over. It only got somewhat exciting near the end, about 80% through. The synopsis had intrigued me, but unfortunately, this book was a major disappointment. The writing was repetitious and quite frankly, poor. The character development was also poor. I did not like any of the characters, nor did I care what happened to them. The plot was also unbelievable - many things were so outlandish that they made reading the book hard.

Thank you Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.