This YA horror book will keep you on the edge of your seat.I was interested in this book because I have recently watched a documentary on a wilderness camp for teenagers that uses “wilderness skills and survival” to mask abuse as a way to reform teens. I also know a family who secretly sent their son to one of these. And they were very cryptic about it, so this is the perfect setting for a horror story. It starts out with conflict and angry teenagers. After two people go missing and weird stuff starts happening that is when the real horror begins.

Thank you to Wednesday Books for a Net Galley copy of this book!

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What the Woods Took was a great book to start the year. It felt like a mix between The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I was a little worried about the story taking place at a wilderness therapy camp. I have heard horrific stories about the troubled teen industry, and I was worried it would be triggering. However, I feel like that aspect of the story is short-lived. Yes, it is the reason they are there, but it is more about them surviving the monsters in the woods than behavioral therapy.

What the Woods Took is truly creepy and dark. The monsters can take the shapes of the people in their lives with the ultimate goal of taking over their bodies as hosts so they can leave the territory they are trapped in. For Devin, that form was one of her ex-fosters who it is implied sexually assaulted her. She is forced to overcome what happened to her in the past to escape.

One of the best parts of this book for me was the character growth. All of the characters overcame their pasts to escape from the monster's territory. Ollie can see that he is worth so much more than the abuse of his father. Aiden can see he doesn't need drugs to make friends. Sheridan comes out of the woods more herself stepping into her own light outside of the death of her twin. While Devin's growth is more about her not letting anger lead her actions.

I also really liked the enemies-to-lovers story between Sheridan and Devin. You could see them slowly beginning to understand what makes each other tick. Even causing them to think that they both might be mimics at different times. I like that in the end they grew enough to accept their feelings for each other.

Parts of the story were heartbreaking. What happened to Hannah and Not Hannah was so sad. It is interesting how Not Hannah was part of the reason Ollie was able to grow and let go of his past. It was heartbreaking how Ollie grieved after the mimic Hannah died trying to protect Aiden.

If you love queer horror this is the book for you. It was an excellent read with truly creepy monsters and lots of character growth.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

What the Woods Took follows teens Devin and Oliver, who are whisked from their beds in the night and brought to an experimental outdoor therapy program which quickly turns life threatening when the program counselors disappear from their campsite.

Courtney Gould always hits for me, and What the Woods Took is no exception. I adored getting to know Devin and Oliver as main characters, and their journeys throughout the story left me shocked, horrified, stressed, and ultimately kinda proud. There was an excellent balance of emotional character building and world crafting, particularly as the teens begin to discover just what in the woods they should be afraid of, and the plot twists are executed masterfully so that I found myself often pleasantly surprised or struggling to decide who to believe. While some aspects of the story are somewhat difficult -- particularly the uncovering of Devin's trauma -- I do think this is one of those easy horror thrillers that readers will quickly sink into and uncover even more than they expect.

Very interesting and unsettling read. I was hooked from the beginning. I enjoyed the characters and storyline.

This was a great! This was an intriguing mystery thriller with a great cast of characters and an attention grabbing story! Really enjoyed the plot and horror elements sprinkled throughout the book! Definitely recommend reading this book!

Thank you to St Martin's Press for sending me a finished copy of What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould to review. I appreciate it!

What a ride! I was excited to read this story in the wake of the news of the bill in the states Paris Hilton has been working on had passed. Our children deserve to be protected especially the ones who are already struggling. For more details on this bill please check out this link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/paris-hilton-bill-congress-troubled-teen-industry-rcna181632

Alright - the book.

We start off with one of our main characters being woken up in the night inside her foster home by two men kidnapping her. But we are quick to discover that Devin is not actually being taken by kidnappers, but rather by two transport specialist who have been authorised by her foster parents to take her and deliver her to Revive - a wilderness camp for troubled teens.

The book is really slow to open up about our characters and what brings them to the trouble teen program, but we find out small pieces of each of them as they are forced to hike into the Idaho woods. cook their own food and sleep under tarps. The two councillors seem a bit out of their depth with a group with so many dynamics and then things really take a Lord of the Flies twist when they cross and river that seems to be the border of something nefarious in the woods. The councillors disappear, food gets destroyed and trust is broken as our teens fight desperately to make it to the next milestone. It turns out that they are not only fighting for survival but as they start to see mysterious faces in the woods, they have to learn to work together if they want to make it out alive.

I enjoyed the style of the book, there were just a bit of slow parts, but over all an interesting twist. An inclusive book with queer characters, but please be warned there is discussion of substance abuse, assault and self harm.

In What the Woods Took, Courtney Gould takes the reader on a supernatural journey through the wilderness with teens labeled “troubled.”
Devin Green wakes in the middle of the night to find two men in her bedroom. This is a planned abduction; her foster parents have signed her up for a program for “troubled” teens. She’s shoved in a van with another confused child and driven deep into the Idaho woods where she’s dropped off with two young adult camp counselors overseeing other kids. They are informed that they've been enrolled in an experimental therapy program: they must change their self-destructive way to be able to survive a fifty-day hike through the wilderness. Completing this program will make them into better people (or so the counselors say).
Devin is immediately determined to escape, but she is talked into staying by the boy Ollie, who was in the van with her. But there’s something strange about these woods. Devin and the others start seeing people in the woods—people who shouldn’t be there, like their parents or wicked teachers. The counselors are of no help, and the teens must bond together as they learn these visions are creatures who are mimicking their loved ones. The worst part? The mimics have replaced one of them!
At first, the horror seems to be the people around Devin. Gould first creates tension between the teens themselves. Will Devin be harmed by one of them when her back is turned? Then layered on is the fear of the adults which begins to expertly foreshadow the true horror that would befall them. Distrust turns to fear which turns to horror as they see visions in the forest.
The biggest issue I had with the story is that the author telegraphed who the mimic was blatantly. Gould tries to distract and throw red herrings, but the reader never buys into it because we already know. The fear then only lies in the attacks by the outside creatures. Their heinous horror is worse than the group’s inner squabble about who the mimic could be. Wearing the face of the one who can hurt you most, these creatures wear you down until you just forfeit your life. Watching the children in-fight when it is clear which one of them has been replaced is hard to read though it does make a point about biases and first impressions.
In fact, knowing that these poor kids are sent on trips like this in real life is even more hard to read. There have been more and more “programs” that we throw at children ran by people who have no idea what they are doing. Psychology is a science and should be treated with respect and concepts should be done by trained personnel. The programs don’t do these and often pair young adults with people not much younger than them. The children’s civil rights and safety are violated. That’s even scarier than the supernatural aspects Gould creates for the book.
Courtney Gould brings to light these wilderness programs that real teens are made to go to in real life. Gould gives hers a supernatural twist to give it another layer of horror (and not call out any one program). The supernatural creatures she creates are terrifying and get to the heart of what really terrifies the children in What The Woods Took.

What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould is a gripping and atmospheric young adult thriller that combines elements of horror, mystery, and psychological drama. The story follows Devin Green, a tough and resourceful teen who is abducted and dropped into a strange wilderness survival program with a group of other troubled teens. As the campers are forced to work together to survive, they quickly realize there are darker forces at play in the woods—forces that go far beyond the experimental therapy they were promised.

Gould expertly builds tension through eerie descriptions of the woods and the unsettling occurrences that begin to unfold. The blend of supernatural elements with the very real struggles of the characters adds depth to the narrative. Devin is a relatable protagonist, determined to survive and protect herself, even as she faces the complex dynamics of her fellow campers, including the antagonistic Sheridan. The tension between the characters, their secrets, and the mysterious forces in the woods kept me on edge throughout.

With a thrilling pace and unexpected twists, What the Woods Took is a dark, fast-paced read that explores themes of trust, survival, and the monsters that lurk both in the wilderness and within ourselves. Fans of psychological thrillers and horror will find this story both haunting and unforgettable.

This was a really good story. I appreciated how feral Devin was at some points. She was stubborn and cared about these kids she barely knew but was forced into this impossible situation with. I felt SO BAD for Ethan, Hannah and Laura. I felt like they deserved better. I really loved how they all became really good friends and still talked to each other even months later. I was also glad to see them get out of the horrible situations they were in and move in with one another. I loved that for them!

What the Woods Took is a story following a group of teens sent to a wilderness therapy program, where the forest holds harbors more danger than originally thought. Devin Green, the protagonist, has been hopping between foster homes, and finds herself in the program with other troubled teens: Sheridan, Oliver,

What drew me in the most to this book were the elements of found family (my beloved) between the kids, as well as the paranormal aspect of the story. The romance and the friendships all felt believable and the kids had excellent chemistry. Enemies to lovers is my jam and so I really loved what was going on between Devin and Sheridan, and how naturally their relationship progressed. In terms of the story, it was tense and genuinely scary at times. The backstories were dark and tragic, but also an unfortunate reality for many kids. The topics were handled with great care and sensitivity by Gould, which only added to the atmosphere. Gould's descriptions of the settings and happenstances had me questioning what was real and what wasn't, which I really enjoy in a novel. Overall, this was an excellent novel and I would recommend it to any horror fan, and will be checking out Gould's other books!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the characters and the setting, and the monsters were particularly creepy. I think the ending was a tiny bit rushed, but I was still satisfied overall and would recommend this read for fans of YA mystery/thrillers.

This novel was such a good read. I thought it was fine in the beginning, and kind of wondered how it was going to go, and then it TOOK OFF. There were moments that were genuinely creepy and gave me chills as I was reading it – namely Devin’s first uh…experience with the woods. (I don’t want to spoil it) I think the dynamic of the characters was really well developed. And I applaud the character development for everyone – especially the way the view of Sheridan changed throughout the novel.

This was a wild ride in a forest set fever dream, that will have you suspicious of everyone.

Highly recommend.

I think at this point I've come to terms that YA truly is no longer for me. Being in this main characters head was beyond frustrating. The writing itself was great and there was definitely some eerie vibes, but I was expecting a little more of the "horror" vibes. There was some good character development, but these characters were so frustrating at times that it just really took me out of the story at atmosphere. Again, I think it was really just a me problem over all.

In European folk and fairytales, a journey through the woods represents the characters’ coming of age—their passage from the pastoral, relative security of familial and familiar hearths into a fraught, shadowy place where metaphors for social anxieties lurk around every corner. Only with wit and friendship can one come out the other side, though they do so irrevocably changed – sometimes liberated through newfound independence, but always burdened with new knowledge.

This pattern is reworked to gripping effect in Courtney Gould’s latest novel, What the Woods Took. A truly fantastic balance between the sensitive, painful humanity of Laurie Halse Anderson and real-world intertextuality of Stephen Graham Jones, Gould’s book is about five troubled teenagers who find themselves enrolled in the inaugural session of a wilderness “therapy” program. Brash butch lesbian Devin (whose experiences with the US foster system have left her counting down to her upcoming 18th birthday) and the much more reticent Ollie (who isn’t so much looking forward as hoping he’ll make it out of the program in time to say goodbye to his dying grandmother), are quickly established as the POV characters. And it’s through their young eyes that we’re introduced prickly, pugnacious Sheridan, pious, anxious Hannah and upbeat, eager Aiden—all of whom have vastly different ideas and expectations about the next fifty days of no phones and no-holds-barred hiking through the wilds of Idaho.

But what starts as an uncomfortable, risk-agreeable experience supervised by two clearly incompetent twenty-somethings slowly devolves into a nightmarish, dangerous fight for survival when their so-called counselors vanish in the middle of the night. Now, five teens from suburbia must make it through a month on the trail with food, water, and healthy coping mechanisms all in short supply. But they soon realize there are far more deadly things waiting in the shadows than starvation and teenage strife. Things that want to kill them…or worse.

The horror is two-fold, both supernatural/metaphorical and the more tangible dangers of being uncared for. The book opens by explaining that the setting and framing device are taken from true stories shared by survivors of the Troubled Teen Industry. The fact that so many of these programs are run by people with no qualifications to provide child care (because that is what the protagonists fundamentally are: scared, scarred children) or mental health care or care of any sort, really, is driven home again and again.

This is also a story about power. Who has it, who gets it, and who takes it—and the trauma that can result when violence enters the equation. Each of the teens seems to personify the fight, flight, fawn, or freeze response when the narrative opens, though we get more complexity and layers to their coping mechanisms throughout. The narrative seems to grow with the characters in that way, and I found myself just as gripped by their choices as the propulsive action and horror elements.

The term “moral ambiguity” is used widely and loosely in reviewing, but I was impressed by Gould’s similar ability to maneuver her readers’ sympathies through the character whose perspective each page was filtered through. We see each person as the hero of their story, and it is only as the story goes along that the cracks in those individual narratives open up to reveal the bigger and uglier conflicts and lack of social support or acceptance that have led them to this terrifying place. Each of the five teens makes mistakes with real consequences, and the emotional weight of those consequences is fully expressed without narrative moralizing. Readers become intimately acquainted with each of their anxieties and aggressions, and it makes what growth we do see all the more powerful.

It called to mind a brilliant Japanese film called Monster. With superficial thematic similarities, writer* and director Hirokazu Kore-da’s 2023 feature revolves around children who respond to difficult circumstances with behavior that is difficult for their caregivers to respond to. Though the film does this through the lenses of the caregivers as well, both it and Gould’s novel play with and on viewer’s sympathies and sentiments to reveal a complicated, nuanced, deeply human story—one that passes no judgment on the moral ambiguities that spring from wanting to protect what is dearest to us.

Speaking of loose film comparisons, people expecting the lurid dramatism of Girl, Interrupted will be disappointed in the best way. Gould’s writing is much more grounded, compassionate, tightly plotted and resistant to pat or reductive simplifications of mental illness and the pain that can breed it. Her teenagers can be cruel, but the cruelty never feels spiteful or self-indulgent or as a set-up for some grand, cliched moral epiphany. The characters’ barbed words are clearly reactive and/or motivated by consistent, well-plotted and well-written factors that aren’t always obvious at the moment of violence, but become apparent later on.

I really enjoyed this book and plowed through the ~300 pages in a single evening. It’ll certainly get your blood pumping on a sluggishly cold winter evening! If I had to have a quibble, it would be the way the story echoes certain Native American folklore without so much as mentioning the history and cultural context behind them, though I am aware that it wouldn’t be fair to expect that level of cultural knowledge from these POV characters. I will add that interested readers can check out the Never Whistle in The Dark anthology for similar, shorter stories from indigenous American perspectives. It’s another great read for cold, dreary winter days.

Who Will Enjoy This: People looking for a good folk horror, wilderness survival thriller, or a moving story about difficult people learning to love and that they can be loved in turn. Fans of messy teenage coming-of-age stories where flawed choices have sometimes dire consequences but it does not feel like the teens are being punished by the narrative for them. Reader who appreciate well-written, well-rounded characters.

Who Might Think Twice: People who would rather not read about trauma around bodily autonomy and detailed descriptions of physical injury. People who encountered a few of Junji Ito’s panels or Clive Barker’s short stories and decided creepy distortions of the human form wasn’t for them in either visual or textual form, no thank you. There are no illustrations here, only text, but the descriptions are more than enough for more imaginative readers…

*Despite his many screenwriting credits, he was editor and director, but not a writer on Monster.

That feeling that "someone is watching you" in book form. Throw a bunch of troubled teens into the woods and watch as their situation goes from bad to much, much worse. Loved the concept and will have me looking over my shoulder every time I take a walk in the woods.

3.5* finally got around to reading this book and I enjoyed it! This is a very slow burn horror, when I first started reading I had to go back to the summary, because I thought this was just around a wilderness therapy camp. The beginning could’ve been cut in half, the real “horror” aspects don’t start until about 40/50% which made the first half drag. The second half and the things they discover in the woods were TERRIFYING! I wish we could have explored the mimics more and learned more about them!

What the woods took follows a group of troubled teens being lead into the wilderness for behavior therapy.
I absolutely loved this book. It had so many different aspects of things that I love merged together in such a perfect way. The horror and creepy aspects were done SO well. The emotional aspects were hard hitting. The characters were all so unique and had so much depth to them. The romance, which I was not expecting, was absolutely adorable and I was rooting for it the entire time. It was actually so beautiful and so much more than I expected.
Huge thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to give an honest review in exchange for this ARC.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have read all of Courtney Gould's book, and this was the best one yet! Very suspenseful, interesting multi-faceted characters, and a creepy setting. I really appreciate that the story centers around the horrible, abusive "wilderness therapy" some teens are forced to go through. It was eye-opening to read about.
I really liked Devin as a main character. She was abrasive, but she had her reasons, and I loved reading a character like her and watching her grow throughout the book.

WOW it’s been a long time since I read a YA mystery that truly kept me on my toes. This was the right balance of thriller and magical realism that had me hooked on trying to figure out what was real and what was an unreliable narrator speaking. I loved it!

When Devin Green wakes up to two kidnappers in her room, she thinks for sure that her foster parents will come to her rescue. Until she realizes that her foster parents PAID these men to take her. Off she goes to wilderness therapy, a form of behavioral therapy focused on troubled teenagers. The group is dropped into the woods on a multi-week journey of trauma recovery and overcoming addiction, but when their guides disappear, it’s up to the teens to make their way out of the woods without getting caught by the same creatures first.

If I see a book about wilderness therapy, I will be reading it. It’s crazy that this is a thing that happens in real life, not just in fiction, and I’ve always found it fascinating in the most horrific way. This book is definitely no different. I know YA isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but if this piques your interest, I definitely recommend a read!

3.5 stars
What The Woods Took went into the unexpected.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press for my eARC for review!
Teenagers Devin, Ollie, Sheridan, Hannah, and Aiden have been labelled as "troubled". They have been forceably sent to the Revive Teen Rehabilitation Program to hike, camp and survive their way to better life choices.
I was expecting a straightforward plot with an inside look at the TTI and wildnerness programs for struggling youth.
What The Woods Took started out that way, but went in a whole other direction.
The Idaho forests have an eerie, unnatural quality to them - void even of animal sounds. Sights from the teen's past traumas emerge from the shadows. I was constantly second-guessing as to who - or what - could be trusted.
This was my first read from author Courtney Gould, and I easily fell into her writing style and the elements incorporated.
Released Dec. 10.