I knew, as soon as I woke up, that it was a day for a park run, for the longest route I do, nearly nine miles in all. Was it from the running? Was it from the car that was too close to her at the end of the last section? There’s a stench of blood in my nostrils, and my hands are sticky with it.”Īfter running with the narrator through the woods, she is now realizing and reflecting on the pain she has endured.

The light in my eyes, the pain in my head. The narrator’s thought process of why she is running and the mantras she comes up with are described. “…I am running through moonlit woods, with branches ripping at my clothes and my feet catching in the snow-bowed bracken. The first three sections of the book showcase this well: I found it difficult to orient myself with what had happened. The chapters of the book jumped around a bunch between what happened before the hen night, during, and after the “accident” happened. While this initially provides the reader with some wonder about what is to come next, it really does not provide much else for the rest of the book. “In a dark, dark wood there was a dark, dark house Īnd in the dark, dark house there was a dark, dark room Īnd in the dark, dark room there was a dark, dark cupboard Īnd in the dark, dark cupboard there was … a skeleton!” The book begins with a traditional Halloween tale, which attempts to set up the dark wood setting and plot line: Reese Witherspoon also provided her two cents on the front cover and told the reader, “Prepared to be scared … really scared.” I’m not sure who paid for all of these rave reviews, but the book was, for the most part, a dud. Working to uncover secrets, reveal motives, and find answers, Nora must revisit parts of herself that she would much rather leave buried where they belong: in the past.” ReviewĪfter reading through rave review after rave review on the back of my paperback copy of this book, I was looking forward to “an enchantingly unsettling thriller” like Shelf Awareness dubbed it. Wondering not ‘what happened?’ but ‘what have I done?” she tries to piece together the events of the past weekend. But as the first night falls, revelations unfold among friends old and new and a haunting realization creeps in – they are not alone in the woods.įorty-eight hours later, Nora wakes up in a hospital bed injured but alive, with the knowledge that someone is dead.

When reclusive writer Leonora is invited to a hen party in an eerie glass house deep in the English countryside, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. Sometimes the only thing to fear … is yourself. “What should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in Ruth Ware’s suspenseful, compulsive, and darkly twisted psychological thriller.

In the dark dark wood review