These Silent Woods

wow idk what happened but i feel like i read a diff book than everyone else reviewing this because i did not love it. i didn't hate it either, but it was very mid, which at first after finishing i thought, well, still 3 stars ... but i can't really think of anything i liked about it actually. so. 2 stars. i feel kinda bad like clearly i missed something that everyone else seemed to get, but idk.

i'm just going to say it, this was boring. i didn't really care all that much beyond just cursory interest for any of these characters. and i wouldn't call this a thriller or even a mystery. maybe a loose mystery, but any mystery elements are revealed pretty quickly, i kept waiting for more ... and there was none. if anything, this is literary fiction that uses a few mystery tropes, and i think if i'd known that going into it, my reading experience might have been very different. but expecting thrilling and mysterious elements made me also LOOK for it. and there was zero payoff. the ending made me annoyed lmao. also the setting didn't do much for me, i've read a lot spookier and better isolation-in-the-woods stories that were actually tension-filled at this point that this one was just like. okay, and? again just was so boring for me and i genuinely don't know if it was just my issue with mismatched expectations or if it was the book itself.