A group of teens forced into wilderness therapy must try to escape a sinister wood after their counselors disappear in What the Woods Took by Courtney Gould, 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. Devin, who has been in dozens of foster homes, describes making "herself into a primal, untethered thing" to survive, while Ollie thinks "it would be easier to just vanish" than to "fix" himself for his dad.
The transformation that each member of the group undertakes once they are forced to rely on each other, not the counselors, speaks to the importance of actual support for youth showing signs of mental distress. Their harrowing ordeal has an ominous and foreboding setting--a "too soundless" wood of groaning trees and the darkness between them that seems to expand--that still boasts breathtaking vistas, such as a verdant mountain forest "like a blanket pulled over the cliff's shoulders" and the sun "the color of grapefruit bleeding down the horizon." 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
Shelf Talker: Teens must escape a sinister wood when their camp counselors disappear in this eerie supernatural YA that pits wilderness therapy against the supportive power of friendship.