The Little Woods: Review
Genre: Mystery, Paranormal, Young Adult
Review:
This one was … interesting. I requested it on Netgalley because I loved the premise: creepy boarding school, the new girl, a murder mystery — all things that I typically enjoy, but it just didn’t deliver. Maybe it was because I read this right after I read Dark Companion which has similar themes. I was still on a high after reading that book and had high expectations for this one, but it just didn’t grab me the way I hoped it would.
The story is very familiar. Still reeling from the death of her sister, Cally enrolls in a posh boarding school and soon after discovers that a girl went missing from the school a few months earlier. Was it a random murder or something else? As Cally adjusts to school life, dealing with some pretty brutal mean girls and other privileged rich kids, typical high school drama and parties, the truth about the missing girl is revealed.
I think my biggest problem with this book was that I never connected with Cally. She didn’t feel real to me. She is a ball of contradictions and I could never really get a good feel for her. Another thing I really didn’t like was the overuse of needless words. A thesaurus can be your friend if used wisely, but it can also be your worst enemy. In this case, the constant use of embellished words ruined the pacing, as did the reveal of the mystery. It came in shorts info dumps peppered throughout the book. It just seemed a little disjointed to me.
The good thing about the book is that the ending is very sweet and well-deserved. Though this one fell short for me, there are plenty of other reviews out there from folks who loved it, so if you are a fan of mysteries and boarding school drama, you may want to give this one a try. For me, it was just okay.
