Review: The Woman in the Woods

 

BOOK TITLE: The Woman in the Woods

AUTHOR: JE Rowney

DESCRIPTION OF BOOK COVER: Woman in red, back to the audience, staring out into a forest of thin looking trees. The title is in red (Woman and Woods) and white.

GENRE: Psychological Thriller

PAGES: 117

BLURB:

Seb is an asshole. Katie is an angel.

When Seb’s night-time activity stretches their relationship to their limits, the couple decide to take a last-chance holiday to see if there’s anything left to be fixed.

The cabin looks idyllic, but behind the soft furnishings and fluffy throws there’s a creepy sense of unease.

They thought they were fighting for their relationship – will they end up fighting for their lives?

# OF STARS: 3

**I was given an advance copy of this to review. Thanks JE Rowney!

I’m going to preface this with the bald face admittance that I don’t read much psychological thriller. It’s never been my jam. But I want to broaden my genre horizons, so when the call came out for reviews on the Fiction Café Writer’s group, I said sign me up! I love boosting the signal for authors since I know how hard it is. But I don’t read much psych thriller, so take my review with that grain of salt.

Ok.

First off, Rowney, I adore your atmosphere writing. It’s amazing – I could smell the trees! I winced when poor Dexter the dog got injured! And the first trouble they get into, yuck! Amazing. Here, have a sample:

 

“Out here, there’s a heavy stench of deep, earthy scents. Damp woodland, mixed up with the fragrance of everything green that has fallen to the floor and started to rot. You’d think that might be an unpleasant aroma, but somehow, it’s not. It isn’t the scent of composting, it’s something else, something natural… It’s delicious. If the colour of dark green had aroma, this would be it.”

 

You get dumped straight into those woods and you can almost feel the dew.

Secondly, the best character, hands down: Dexter. I want to have a dog like Dexter. Even if he does get into things, rip leashes out of hands so hard that you get leather burn (ouch Seb, ouch) and I felt so bad when he got injured, even though it was relatively superficial.

 

Now, the issues. (And again, grain of salt. I’m a Canadian who reads fantasy and sci fi, not someone in the UK reading psych thrillers. I’m sure there’s a culture issue).

I can’t do too much around the Major Issue I had because it would be a spoiler. Suffice to say, the last third has a huge plot hole that wrecks it. And it’s a damn shame because I think it could be fixed and the book would be so much creepier for it. But non-spoiler because the book hasn’t actually come out yet. (I will probably update in a few months, if I remember). The ending also felt rushed and because of the Big Plot Hole, kinda pointless. Damn shame.

The other issue is the main characters. Katie did not seem like much of an angel to me. She seemed bratty, whiny, and kinda stupid (leading to the huge plot hole). I didn’t like her one bit and my attitude didn’t change by the end.

Seb is an asshole, but not *that big* an asshole. Now mind, we are reading the whole thing from his perspective, so of course, he’s probably not showing us all the jerk that Katie or others are seeing. But if he’s *That big a jerk* then why is Katie still with him? Especially since their relationship has been failing for a while now due to him completely dropping the ball on how to handle a rather traumatic event in Katie’s life.

Honestly, even with him dropping that ball, I actually felt more bad for Seb than Katie and I don’t think that was the intent. Mind you, I don’t generally get along with other women anyway, so take that how you will, ha!

And the villain made no sense either since we don’t see what the motivation was. And I can’t talk too much more because spoilers.

I found it very interesting that we were reading it from Seb’s perspective. That was unique. Usually in books like this, it’s all from the woman’s point of view, so it was refreshing. He came off, to me, a lot more sympathetic than maybe was intended? Maybe I’m just twisted.

I want to know more about the titular character or have a spin off around that character. It’d be really interesting, especially since this author has a reputation for doing really good mental trauma stories. Plus, her dialogue was just neat. Interesting stuff.

 So, in all, and again, grain of salt, I think that there was a really good seed of a story here. But it grew in the wrong direction and ended up a mess at the end. I loved the descriptive writing, the atmosphere, and the dog! I want Seb to dump Katie cause I’m sure he can do better. Or at least not worse. And Dexter can live happily ever after because he is a Good Dog!

Now, go forth and prove me wrong because I could easily be missing something. JE Downey’s book The Woman in the Woods comes out end of February.

In the meantime, go read I Can’t Sleep. I have yet to read it myself, but I’ve heard it’s a-mazing.

I don’t write thrillers, so you’ll have to make do with Something Borrowed. It’s a fantasy/mystery short story.

I emailed my editor to see where things are at, so hopefully I will shortly have an update.