It’s 1975 and summer camp at a remote preserve in the Adirondack mountains, Northeastern New York, is drawing towards a close. Then one of the teenagers, Barbara, goes missing. But she isn’t just any camper, she is the daughter of the affluent Van Laar family, whose picturesque lands of forests and lakes around their grand lodge have hosted these summer campers for several generations. She also isn’t the first Van Laar child to go missing, with the disappearance of her brother Bear 14 years earlier. 

Moving back and forth in time, and spanning three decades, The God of the Woods is a gripping literary thriller and family saga, centering around a powerful family that both looms above and remains intricately linked to the local, hard-working community around it, written in short propulsive chapters from a diverse mix of key perspectives. Louise, the camp counsellor who is trying to work her way to a better life than what she has come from, and who was in charge of Barbara when she went missing. Tracy, a shy and awkward camper whose summer is changed when the defiant but magnetic Barbara chooses her as a friend. Alice, Barbara’s mother, drawn into the Van Laar family at a young age. Judyta, the brilliant young investigator who has to fight for responsibility and respect. And several other characters, each one of whose storyline contributes new pieces bit by bit to this intricately crafted puzzle, as we draw closer to an end that I didn’t see coming until just before all was revealed. 

From well-developed characters with compelling back stories, that we can’t help but become invested in, and vividly captured settings, to a fully immersive writing style and a clever, compulsive plot, Moore’s novel explores everything from privilege, misogyny and abuse of power, to complex families and betrayal, loss and trauma, well kept secrets, and the ties that bind and break people. I loved absolutely everything about this book, to say it’s a page-turner would be putting it lightly, and it was one of those ones that, as soon as I finished it, I wished I could start all over again for the first time. Highly recommend!

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Published by HarperCollins UK/The Borough Press. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the DRC. 

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Liz Moore is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Long Bright River, which was a Good Morning America Book Club Pick and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year, as well as the acclaimed novels Heft and The Unseen World. A winner of the 2014-2015 Rome Prize in Literature, she lives in Philadelphia.