A group of teens forced into wilderness therapy must try to escape a sinister wood after their counselors disappear in Courtney Gould's What the Woods Took, an eerie supernatural YA thriller in which lurking monsters know everyone's most traumatic memories.
Five unacquainted teens have been thrust into REVIVE, a wilderness therapy program led by two young coaches. They will, over 50 days of hiking and survival work, "cope with some pretty tricky turns" their lives have taken--such as violence or drug and alcohol use--and be "rebuilt and renewed" via "deeply disquiet[ing]" situations. When their coaches disappear, which clearly isn't part of the program, the group concocts a plan to flee before whatever lies in wait attacks them, too. But their supernatural foes can call forth their fears and mimic people they know--even each other. If the teens can't put paranoia aside and get out together, they might not get out at all.
Gould (Where Echoes Die) lays bare the abuses of the "Troubled Teen Industry" and wilderness therapy by paralleling it with the disturbing "mimics," creatures that take the shape of what most triggers each teen then pry their anxieties from their minds and use the details against them. Gould brilliantly reveals how these "troubled delinquent[s]" have each suffered nightmarish emotional pain, including bad dads, child sexual abuse, and the death of a loved one. The third-person close perspective alternates between Ollie's and Devin's stunningly candid voices. A slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers queer romance also steals the breath in this macabre tale sure to frighten even as it celebrates healing. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer