Book Review / Girl in the Woods by Jennifer McMahon

"The New York Times" bestselling author of the acclaimed "Island of Lost Girls" and "Promise Not to Tell" returns with a chilling novel in which the secrets of the past come back to haunt a group of friends in terrifying ways.

Dismantlement = Freedom

Henry, Tess, Winnie, and Suz banded together in college to form a group they called the Compassionate Dismantlers. Following the first rule of their manifesto--"To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart"--these daring misfits spend the summer after graduation in a remote cabin in the Vermont woods committing acts of meaningful vandalism and plotting elaborate, often dangerous, pranks. But everything changes when one particularly twisted experiment ends in Suz's death and the others decide to cover it up.

Nearly a decade later, Henry and Tess are living just an hour's drive from the old cabin. Each is desperate to move on from the summer of the Dismantlers, but their guilt isn't ready to let them go. When a victim of their past pranks commits suicide--apparently triggered by a mysterious Dismantler-style postcard--it sets off a chain of eerie events that threatens to engulf Henry, Tess, and their inquisitive nine-year-old daughter, Emma.

Is there someone who wants to reveal their secrets? Is it possible that Suz did not really die--or has she somehow found a way back to seek revenge?

Full of white-knuckle tension with deeply human characters caught in circumstances beyond their control, Jennifer McMahon's gripping story and spine-tingling plot prove that she is a master at weaving the fear of the supernatural with the stark realities of life.

Published:     2009
Publisher:  Little Brown
Goodreads :  Click here
Series or Stand-Alone:  Stand-Alone
Source:  Library

MY REVIEW

What I liked about this story...  I just could not put this down.  At 423 pages, I knew that I would not be able to read this in one sitting but I try, really hard!  The one thing that I am really loving about Jennifer McMahon's writing is that sense of creepiness and a sense of the paranormal or something not quite right.  In this story, we follow Henry and Tess all grown up with a kid of their own.  They seem like a normal family but there's a lot more to this couple than meets the eye.  They certainly have a past that they would prefer to keep hidden but someone or something has other plans about that.  All the trouble starts when their daughter discovers a box of old things and leans about the Compassionate Dismantlers.  Not knowing how bad it would turn out to be, she decides to try and make her parents happy again by sending invitations to those who were part of the Compassionate Dismantlers.   There are quite a few twists and turns in this story that kept me hooked right until the very last page!

 In summary...  A very creepy book with a lot of twists and turns to keep you wanting to read more.  If you love thrillers, you need to pick up this book!