I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it was pretty compelling reading. On the other hand, I can't say I particularly liked any of the characters and the end of the book got really silly in my opinion. For someone who loves horror this book had one of my favourite tropes - group of friends reuniting but hide something terrible in their pasts.

There is the standard collection of high school stereotypes - the jock, the popular girl, the trashy girl, the nerd, the cool guy and the new girl. We’re introduced to these characters in their adult years long after high school and each one is introduced when a member of their group invites them back for a memorial service after one of their group passed.

The characters come off as shallow, self centred and annoying, with hardly any redeeming qualities. Once they’re all together old scores and feelings are provoked as they start to remember what happened that fateful night. To be fair, it was pretty suspenseful waiting for the build up and there was a good atmosphere of tension and worry as the story builds.

All involving a creepy woods. It’s easy with this sort of novel to assume you know exactly where its going if you’ve watched hundreds of movies with similar plots, however, it did take a rather surprising turn. Unfortunately for me, this is where it went downhill pretty fast.

I found the whole thing rather annoying and by the time the cast started dropping like flies I was kind of hopping everyone would be killed off. It wasn’t badly written by any means and certainly had it moments. I would definitely read something by the author again but this book didn’t work for me.

This is a tale about a group of friends in their forties who come together again following the loss of a member from their teenage friend circle. It's revealed that a dark incident from their past led to them growing apart and never discussing it again.

The story starts rather slowly, with lengthy chapters that delve into the present lives of each character, which might not immediately captivate the reader. As the plot gains momentum, it uncovers the mysteries of their past, drawing the reader in. However, these engaging moments tend to be brief, as the story frequently returns to character development, sharing details about their crushes and personal insecurities, creating a sense of frustration.

The characters themselves may come across as uninteresting and draining. The type of horror explored in the book may not align with your preferences, as it differs from the extreme horror typically associated with the author's work, which you prefer.

Even though this is your favorite author, this particular book didn't meet your expectations. While some readers may appreciate this style of horror, it didn't align with your preferences.

Something to know about me: I have always found woods to be eerie/creepy - I grew up with them behind me and a grandfather who VERY much enjoyed scaring the crap out of me (it was fun, promise), so this one was bound to have me on edge. I enjoyed That Night in the Woods but something was off, almost like the pacing was too slow or I was getting lost (in the wrong way) in the story. A good spooky season read, but a tad confusing.

That Night in the Woods
Kristopher Triana
Horror | Occult Horror

🌲 Haunted Woods
🏡 Small Town
👥 Shared Past
😈 Demons

Ratings:
Overall | 🥀 🥀 🥀.5
Gore | 🩸🩸🩸🩸
Scare Factor | 👻👻👻
Darkness Level | 🖤🖤🖤

Review:
*Read as an ARC on my Kindle.*

I have yet to read a Triana book that I haven’t enjoyed and I was thrilled for the opportunity to read this as an ARC. Haunted woods is one of my favorite tropes and Triana has mastered all the atmospheric elements that makes this a spine tingling read.

There were parts that did drag for me a little bit, but as a reader I have a hard time with timelines swapping back and forth. I think that’s what made this a difficult read for me. It all comes together in the end though and I wasn’t left wondering about anything that happened early on. I won’t give too much away, but all of the monsters in this book were unnerving and terrifying in their own way. Unseen terror is one of my fears and parts of this book had the hair standing up on the back of my neck.

Overall, I liked the story and all of the characters were fully formed and interesting. By the halfway point, my reading pace picked up because I just HAD to know how it resolved. Pieces of it reminded me of Cabin in the Woods and I will never listen to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” the same way again. If you enjoy Triana and the Haunted Woods or Demons tropes, definitely pick this one up.

Mood Board:
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Bookshop | https://bookshop.org/a/96234/9781587679032

How I Rate:
https://readashredd.square.site/s/stories/how-i-review

A haunting and bewitching tale, This is an adult novel, full of rich detail. It reads poetic in some places, and it feels it’s ties into a YA like demonic world. Thank you to the publisher for letting me read this on netgallery

“That Night in the Woods” is a gripping novel that skillfully weaves together elements of creepiness, nostalgia, and a hauntingly atmospheric woodland setting. The story revolves around five childhood friends who come together once again in their forties, prompted by the death of one of their own.

Something terrible happened in the woods when they were teens, and they’ve never spoken of it since. Others were present in the woods that night, and now they will reunite to unravel the truth. The unsettling woods create a perfect setting for the unfolding events, adding to the sense of foreboding.

Triana's portrayal perfectly captures the nostalgic experience of reconnecting with old friends. The characters are a diverse and relatable group, each with their own struggles.

I rooted for many of the characters, especially tagalong Corey with his geeky nature and affection for comics. Jennifer's searching to rediscover herself as she goes through a divorce and is called back home by her highschool sweetheart. I fervently hoped for Mark and Traci to triumph over the hardships of their upbringing. Each character's distinct narrative added diversity and enriched the story.

However, the book’s ending left me with mixed emotions. While I can appreciate the author’s intent, it left me disappointed. It’s a realistic ending, but it wasn’t exactly hopeful.

Despite this, the book remains an enjoyable read that will linger in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page.

I did enjoy the ending of this one but getting there was so long! The pacing felt way too slow for me!

Thank you net galley!

Vibes: The woods. 1990’s. Suicide woods. Halloween. Backstabbing. Diaries.

My review:
If you’re looking for a book with creepy vibes, Kristopher Triana brings that with his newest story. Going back and forth between past and present, I put the pieces together one page at a time (that’s all you’re allotted here with the amount of action that transpires). Some information you could’ve guessed, while others leave you wondering what in the heck is even going on. It’s like when you’re walking on a sidewalk, and someone is coming towards you on the same side of the sidewalk, so you switch sides and they do too, and then they switch back suddenly so you can pass - it’s that type of story. You think you know, but do you really?

While I didn’t relate to any of the characters or feel a personal connection to any of them, I was just waiting for the mayhem to jumpscare me….and it does. Because I didn’t feel that connection to the characters, I bumped an otherwise 5 star review down a peg. Kristopher knows how to write and I have the upmost faith in his writing he will keep that up.

Don’t go out in the woods alone.

I liked this one. The woods are always a creepy place for me so it automatically had that factor going for it. Sometimes dual timelines get either tedious or monotonous but in this case, it worked.

I think it was meant to be more fast-paced, but it was kind of slow for me. I think it would make for a great movie, but the ending would need to be fixed. I wasn’t crazy about how it ended.

That Night in the Woods tells the story of a group of childhood friends who return to their hometown to mourn the passing of their friend Steve after sharing a traumatic night in the woods together on Halloween more than 20 years ago.

This is the first book I’ve read by Triana and while I loved the writing style and the setting and creepy vibes, it was only a 3 star read for me.

The story started off very slow but I got really invested once the introduction to every main character was finished. (Btw, I didn’t care for any of the characters which is never a good sign).
The eerie atmosphere in the first half of the book was fantastic. And the writing was very good.
But the POV‘s alternated without warning which was kind of confusing.

Right in the middle the story started to drag a little bit.

The ending didn’t make sense at all and left me feeling disappointed and frustrated. This could have been a 4 star read if it hadn’t been for that ending.

It definitely is a great read for Halloween. It‘s unsettling, disturbing and gruesome and I wouldn’t want to spend Halloween in the woods after reading it.

I wanted to love this and I really enjoyed parts of the story but ultimately too many things just didn’t work for me.

I love Kristopher Triana books but this one fell a bit flat for me. I couldn’t focus on it properly and wasn’t as intrigued and immersed as usual. A bit disappointing, especially compared to his other books.

This wasn't a bad read, though not necessarily as creepy or scary as I had hoped.

It reminded me a bit of The Ritual. Four friends get together to remember an old friend. Together they revisit dark secrets, past trauma, and work to solve something that happened between them all years ago.

It's an okay read, it starts kind of slowly, but soon picks up. And it's kind of interesting to discover exactly what this thing was that happened all those years ago.

I hadn't read anything by Triana before, but I'd heard so many good things about #GoneToSeeTheRiverMan that I was excited to jump into this one. I love it when terrible things happen in majestic woods.

But this was kind of a struggle.

It felt like most of the book was an explanation of the story. I never got lost in the words because we were constantly pulled out of it to be told something irrelevant.

I also found the...for lack of a better word, gender politics off-putting. Perhaps there was meant to be a message in the way the women were all very concerned with their appearances and the men were fully caught in lust and toxic masculinity, but I missed it.

And then there's my mystery pet peeve. The Scooby Doo style of reveals where you, the reader, never really has enough information to figure anything out. Knowledge is given to you too late, in info-dumps or exposition via dialogue between characters who don't need to be telling each other these things.

YMMV. Maybe this just wasn't for me. I'm still going to read more Triana. The story here was good and I've heard some of the issues I had are uncharacteristic for his writing.

🍂🍂
2/5 sweater weather breezes smelling of doom and bad omens.

Thank you NetGalley and Cemetery Dance Publications for this book!

Let me just say...I could have never guessed where this book was going to go...AT ALL.

It took me a good while to get through this book; I was uninterested for a good part of it, but I knew there was something not being said or reveled and that had me going back to read this book. I am the type of reader that likes action or something right off the bat. But I honestly really wanted to get some horror reads in for the month of October and this book didn't disappoint.

50%-60% of the way through I was hooked. This book a turn I was not expecting! I will not give any spoilers but man oh man was this twisted. And I mean that in the best way. I expect horror/mystery books to be this way. I love twisted, gory, suspense and absolutely psychotic horror movies.

Give this book a shot. Once you get to that place where everything starts to click you'll be hooked and wanting to finish it.

I am so grateful to have read this book!!

It was fast paced, creepy (borderline disturbing), and I couldn't get enough!

I'm not the biggest horror lover but I couldn't put this one down!

The writing style was great and I would definitely read other books by this author!

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to review. The thoughts and opinions are my own. Jennifer gets a call from scott who is her first love he convinces her to come back to their home town to catch up. She's wary at first because their friend steven recently passed. After she gets there she realizes she is not the only person scott invited. This book follows two timelines now and when they were teenagers. I thought many times I knew where this book was going. No I didnt see it coming. It's like the blair witch project on steroids. i enjoyed every minute of it!

I DNFed at 75% which is longer than I wanted to give it, but I was curious about something and once I had my answer I was done. The premise in the beginning was promising. A group of childhood friends all middle-aged and going through various crises get back together to celebrate the life of a friend that had passed but also tackle a traumatic event that had happened to them. I don't need every horror I read to scare the bejeezus out of me, but I at least need to be unsettled or disturbed by whatever is supposed to be scary. I was more bored than anything else. The promising premise quickly falls apart in part two when the woods themselves are not nearly as terrifying as I thought they would be.

This is the first time I have ever read anything by this author and I am very thankful to have read this book as an ARC.

With that being said, I give this book 2.5 stars.
I am a lover of all things horror and while I thought this book had a lot of potential, it just fell a little flat for me.
I don't think this book stands out among the rest in originality and from someone who reads a bit of horror, this will end up being forgotten pretty quickly.
I always love a good *friend-group goes through trauma and if forced to separate then come back together to face more trauma* but the details in this story made it feel like it was dragging on and on.

If you are still new to horror and want a familiar plot, this book would be good.

I have never read anything by this author before but I do enjoy a good horror book every now and again, unfortunately, whilst this showed a lot of promise, it didn't hit the mark for me.

An old friend passes away and a group of his friends are invited to honour him by getting together in the town they grew up in. Slowly, we learn that something horrendous happened to them during a camp out on Halloween when they were teenagers which led them to drift apart.

The characters are really well developed however, herein lies one of the problems; there is just too much information about their lives which makes the story drag on. It picks up (mostly) when we start to find out what happened in those woods all those years ago but then it goes downhill again and becomes something quite unbelievable even for a horror book and I found myself flicking the pages to get to the eventual outcome which, unfortunately, was a bit of an anti-climax.

It's a shame really because it had all the makings of a really good horror/supernatural book but there was just too much talking about the characters, their lives and how they felt about each other rather than focussing on the horror in the woods.

My thanks must go to the author, Cemetery Dance Publications and NetGalley for enabling me to read and share my thoughts of The Night in the Woods.

I’d say this is like one of those cheesy, direct to video horror movies. It’s fast-paced, fairly entertaining, and creepy enough to be passable. If you think too much about it, it’s implausible, though. Also a bit gross (not in terms of gore but the whole plot surrounds what’s essentially sexual abuse).

I can’t say it was bad. It was what I was looking for in terms of a good, creepy, fast read. Did it change my life? No. Did I read it fast and find myself interested? Yes. Solid at what it sets out to do.

Thanks for the ARC to the publisher and NetGalley.