Secrets, secrets are no fun.
Naomi, Olivia, and Cassie were 11 years old when they were brutally attacked in the woods by a well-known and hunted serial killer who was also wanted for the deaths of countless other women. The woods: once their safe-haven, once their backdrop to live out their fantasy game of spirits, potions, dungeons, and goddesses. The woods: the place where their lives would change forever. The woods: the link that would always connect them to each other. The woods: the keeper of so many secrets and lies. They have tried to move on, each in their own way. When the girls, now adults, received phone calls from the authorities that their attacker had died in prison, the news should have brought them a sense of peace and closure. Instead, it caused them to revisit the past, both physically and figuratively, and caused them to question the stories they had told detectives, lawyers, juries, and themselves. When Olivia contacts Cassie and Naomi and tells them she must come clean about one of their deepest and darkest secrets, the girls can’t help but think their actual reality and perceived reality is about to be turned upside down. Naomi, especially, questions her memory of events as she was the one who suffered the most physical injuries in the attack. On her quest to find truth and a release from the burden of living with the knowledge that her testimony put a man in prison for the rest of his life, Naomi starts to uncover more parts to the story that cause her to question her memory, her family, and her friends. The more she more she finds out, the more she questions; and the more she questions, the more she wraps herself in a dangerous web of lies.
Trigger warnings: Language, death, suicide, murder, mythological stories involving potions/spells/sacrifices, sexual content
Why I read it: Book of the month pick