The Woods is the latest psychological thriller from writer Vanessa Savage and introduces us to Tess Cooper. Tess is a secondary school teacher residing in London when she receives an urgent call from her father back in the chocolate-box village of West Dean in the Vale of Glamorgan imploring her to come back home as her stepmother, Julia, is close to death. This terrifies Tess so much that she starts to have nightmares, become completely paranoid and hallucinate. She knew this day would come but had managed to sweep any thoughts of it aside pretty successfully until the dreaded phone call. The catalyst that led to her leaving a decade ago was her sister Bella’s death and to make matters worse it took place on her father and stepmother's wedding day. It was ruled as a tragic accident and although Tess woke up next to Bella’s lifeless body she had no idea what had happened and has not regained her memory of the events of the night in question since.

This is a compulsive, superbly plotted and thoroughly addictive read and Tess is the ultimate unreliable narrator making for a totally unpredictable story. It was much more chilling and disturbing than the synopsis suggests and the deliciously dark yarn builds the tension slowly over the course of the novel. The plethora of twists and turns were difficult to see coming and Bella’s death continues to be the focal point. I have read quite a few woods-based thrillers of late yet many of them fail to create the tense atmosphere Savage manages to conjure here. The woods seem so important to the book that they are almost a character in themselves and they created a sense of foreboding that ran throughout. The atmospheric descriptions of the scenery and the weather give me hope that Ms Savage can become a big name in the crime writing community. Many thanks to Sphere for an ARC.

“Two girls went in. Only one came out.”
This tag line grabbed my attention and was looking forward to reading this book. I really liked how the author created this image of the woods, you could picture it in your head and imagine the events that happened there. It was chilling and creepy which is exactly what the front cover and tag line promised!

However, as much as the storyline had me intrigued I felt the pace of the book was slow. Some parts felt drawn out and that it was just writing for the sake of writing. The book is written from the point of view of the girl who came back out of the woods. Everything we read is her thoughts and opinions, which works well but also puts her assumptions about the other characters into our head.

I predicted the end, and although felt it was slightly disappointing, the ending was the best part of the book for me!