The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke | Horror Fiction Review

So much has changed,  yet so little has changed. Le Sigh.

My 2 Cents for Free!


The Ghost Woods by C.J. Cooke

Released October 2022
Source: Purchased
Get it at your local library or see more @ Goodreads

This is my favorite of the three CJ Cooke books I've read. The other two were The Lighthouse Witches and The Book of Witching. I think I gave them both a three. One of them had two timelines which is sometimes tricky when they don't connect for the majority of the story. It often drives me nuts but that wasn't a problem at all in this one. The timelines here are only a few years apart and they meld somewhere at the midway point. 

The Ghost Woods tells the story of several young women who are sent "away" when their pregnancies become an inconvenience that their families just want to shove under the rug. Why is society always so awful to women? Ugh. Anyhow, sometimes they're allowed back but more often than not, especially for the ones without means, they're just abandoned and left to beg for scraps and do unpaid labor for the owner of the moldering old mansion. It's terrible and often heartbreaking stuff but I could not put it down. 

There is a lot going on in this book and all of it was interesting to me and I never felt lost or confused. The characters were well created, and I really felt for them. Even though I figured out a thing or two early on, I didn't even care because the getting there is what kept me hooked. This was the rare book that haunted me after putting it down to attend to real life. 

I really enjoyed The Ghost Woods and highly recommend it to readers who enjoy an old school feeling gothic. It was creepy, suspenseful and I didn’t feel it ever get bogged down with tedium as so many books do lately (for me, at least - you're probably less grouchy!). 

Final Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐1/2


Publisher Plot Synopsis 

In the midst of the woods stands a house called Lichen Hall.

This place is shrouded in folklore—old stories of ghosts, of witches, of a child who was not quite a child.

Now the woods are creeping closer, and something has been unleashed.

Pearl Gorham arrives in 1965, one of a string of young women sent to Lichen Hall to give birth. And she soon suspects the proprietors are hiding something.

Then she meets the mysterious mother and young boy who live in the grounds—and together they begin to unpick the secrets of this place.

As the truth comes to the surface and the darkness moves in, Pearl must rethink everything she knew—and risk what she holds most dear.

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