Review: That Night in the Woods by Kristopher Triana

That Night in the Woods

by Kristopher Triana

Release Date: October 1st, 2023

2023 Cemetery Dance Publications

Ebook Edition; 336 Pages

ISBN: 978-1587679032

ASIN: B0CJH9BMQF

Genre: Fiction / Horror

Source: Review copy from publisher

2 / 5 Stars

Summary

When Jennifer receives a message from Scott Dwyer after twenty years without contact, her first reaction is one of excitement. Scott invites Jennifer to his house in Redford, the very same town she grew up in. It’s a place she’s made great effort to put behind her, for not all her childhood memories are sunny. 

Scott invites three other people from their past to honor Steven’s memory—Corey, Traci, and Mark. But the group is more than old friends. They share a dark secret that has troubled them for decades. Together, they must unravel the mystery of what happened that night in the patch of forest behind Scott’s house, a place once known as Suicide Woods. 

 

My Thoughts

That Night in the Woods is built around a trope that I really like, trauma that occurs in your teens and you get together twenty years later to finally confront what happens. Because this is written by the author of one of my favourite horror novels, I thought, what could possibly go wrong with this book? It turns out that even a really good author can have a one-off.

 

First of all, the characters were so stereotypical they just made me want to drop them all off in the middle of that forest and hope whatever was in there got them all. And I am not generally a violent person, but they sucked the living energy right out of me.  I get their behaviour when they were teenagers, but to continue that same behaviour as 40-somethings just did not work.  I get the author was trying to show how traumatized they were from what happened, but...there had to be a better way to do it. We have Mark, the out-of-work construction worker with two kids from two separate moms who has been in jail a couple of times, who smokes and drinks and ALL he thinks about is sex.  Jennifer, newly divorced, has no personality although the other boys apparently all had something for her as a teenager. She can't make decisions if her life depended on it, especially when lover-boy Scott is around, and this is as a teen and as a 40-something-year-old. Corey, the character I liked best, constantly talked about what a nerd he was because he liked comic magazines. What? And Traci? I get her alcoholism, but not her lies.  Together, it was hard to tell who was who at times.  

 

The build-up at the beginning was slow, something I didn't actually mind, as I like it when the tension builds up this way and then becomes explosive and you can't put down the book.  Unfortunately, the tension never really builds in the way it was meant to. The characters are given bits and pieces of information through Scott, and none of them questioned this at all, didn't even ask for paperwork or anything, especially with Traci being a lawyer? This would have sent my spidey senses tingling right away.  They are given mysterious journals, pieces of information about Steven's life and death, all being doled out bit by bit by Scott. Instead of questioning this behaviour, they react like a bunch of teenagers, squabbling and making stupid decisions, forgetting they are adults who can decide for themselves what they can do or not do.  I found I just had to suspend belief way too much during all of this and I kept shaking my head in disbelief.  And there was no blasted way you would have got me back in that forest after what happened all those years ago. No *^%%* way!!  And when we finally got to the part where it was supposed to get scary, I was like, Are you kidding me?  

 

Verdict

That Night in the Woods had so much potential, but I was so deflated by the end. And speaking of the end, what was that? The one character who fought and fought decides to just give up, just like that, with no explanation? Overall, there were a couple of moments that were chilling and horrific, but the overall experience left me shaking my head and feeling so disappointed, especially after the last book by this author.  It wasn't badly written by any stretch of the imagination, and I do think a lot of people will enjoy this book, I just wasn't one of them.