“A woods can be a miracle of light and shadow. A woods can be a place to dream,” (Hunt 5).
If you know anything about me then you know that 1) I love fairy tales, especially if they’re dark and 2) I love books about evil/complicated women. In the House in the Dark of the Woods has all of these things and more so naturally this book was a win for me!
In the House in the Dark of the Woods follows a young Puritan woman known only as Goody who finds herself lost in the woods after going to get fresh berries for her husband an son. Or is that why she went to the woods? We follow Goody as she travels further and further into the woods where she finds Captain Jane and her fearsome boat that can travel on sea and air, Eliza of the woods in her safe stone cottage where she wishes to make Goody well again, as well as wolves and swarms of insects, tree bark that shows truths and lies. The woods are a strange, dangerous, and tempting place and Goody must find her way out of them.
I adored this book because it has everything I like in a story. Right away we’re thrown right into the story with little information, we follow Goody into the woods and she tells us of the strange things she sees and experiences so naturally it’s something that can definitely make you read some parts over and maybe even cause some confusion. But I really like books where I have to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, where even while the picture grows bigger it isn’t until the end that it all makes sense.
“The honey was delicious, heavy gold with marks of comb and only here or there a leg or wing or who knows what else that had been pulled into the trickling swamp,” (Hunt 27).
It’s subtly terrifying and that’s largely with Hunt’s fantastic description’s and Goody’s neutral perspective.
“I went to the sundries room, where my man had spread a pallet of straw for me. The rope he used to tie my wrists hung limply over it from the wall post,” (Hunt 169).
Parts like these appear throughout the book and just send a chill down your spine until you get deeper into the woods and find another horror to chill you.
If you don’t like being thrown into a story then this book might not be the one for you, but if you want to get lost in a fairy tale and attempt to find your way out then In the House in the Dark of the Woods is the perfect place to start your journey.
Publication: October 8th 2019
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Pages: 224 pages
Source: Birthday Gift (Thanks Dad!)
Genre: Fiction, Fairy Tale, Horror, Historical Fiction
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
“Once upon a time there was and there wasn’t a woman who went to the woods.” In this horror story set in colonial New England, a law-abiding Puritan woman goes missing. Or perhaps she has fled or abandoned her family. Or perhaps she’s been kidnapped, and set loose to wander in the dense woods of the north. Alone and possibly lost, she meets another woman in the forest. Then everything changes.
On a journey that will take her through dark woods full of almost-human wolves, through a deep well wet with the screams of men, and on a living ship made of human bones, our heroine may find that the evil she flees has been inside her all along.
Sarah O'Connor 