Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Book Review: If You Go Down To The Woods

Honestly, I don't think I have read this many thrillers in a three year span combined than I have just the first three months of this year. It's crazy!

If You Go Down To The Woods - Seth C. Adams
We were so young when it all happened--just 13-year-olds making the most of the long, hot, lazy days of summer, thinking we had the world at our feet. That was us--me, Fat Bobby, Jim, and Tara--the four members of the Outsiders’ Club. The day we found a burnt-out car in the woods was the day everything changed. Cold, hard cash in the front seat and a body in the trunk. It started as a mystery we were desperate to solve. Then the Collector arrived. He knew we had found his secret, and suddenly, our summer of innocence turned into the stuff of nightmares.

I actually wanted to read this one because the preview gave me the feel of a Jennifer McMahon book and I am a big fan of hers. As it turns out, I wasn't really wrong. This book really starts out as a simple story of a couple of kids forming a little club and hanging out and maybe finding something not so great and it ends as something completely different and the transition between those two things is really fantastic.

The great part about this book is the nostalgia feeling it gives you. Reading this and you're brought right back to your days as a kid and I think we would all say we felt like an outsider ourselves so we'd feel like fifth member of the club. It's also compared to Stephen King's It and I will tell you- I am 37 years old and I think I was in sixth grade when that was a made for TV movie and it scared the crap out of me. To this day I won't walk past gutters and I do the running jump into my bed (even when I was VERY pregnant) even though I have drawers under my bed- you can't get under there. That made me a little nervous but I'll be honest, I didn't see a ton of comparison between the two but again, I have never finished It so I don't know. Maybe they end similarly but I wasn't scared reading this one. It's like Diet Horror. I think what helped to make it not scare me senseless is the fact these are kids and they are early teenage years. Somehow that made me think the scarier, more suspenseful parts were maybe a little more dramatized because it's a teenager. Do you know what I mean? Also, would the kids realistically do/say the things they do in the book? No, probably not and I'm pretty OK with that. What did bother me is some of the language, and you know I'm not a prude, there isn't much that offends me. I am trying to be more mindful of my own language and things I say so maybe that's why I picked up on things but there are some homophobic slurs and a few spots that I thought had a negative racial connotation and I tried to remember this book isn't taking place in 2019 so maybe this was true to the time, I don't know. But I felt uncomfortable in a few areas.

Overall? It was pretty good. I finished it over the course of a weekend. It was entertaining and I'd give it a 3.5 star.. maybe bumped up to a 4.

   
I received a copy of this book courtesy of the publisher (thank you!!) in exchange for an honest review, all thoughts and opinions are my own. Happy reading!

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