2024 Reading Challenge

2024 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 1 book toward her goal of 285 books.
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2023 Reading Challenge

2023 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 5 books toward her goal of 265 books.
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Book Blurb: In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

This is another of those deceptively short reviews. It’s a pretty short book, so that’s part of it, but mostly it’s because to tell you anything more would be to risk peeling back a layer that you’re not going to want to cheat yourself of in the slightest bit… So pick it up and then let me know what you think – I’m dying to talk about it, just not at the risk of spoilers!

This was a dark and eerie and amazing story that haunted and entertained simultaneously… I have a 5-year old daughter, and wasn’t sure I’d be able to read about the aftermath of such a child’s death. But Bailey has such a deft facility with language that I found myself sucked into the story almost against my will and could not stop reading. There are victims and perpetrators in this book but mostly there are accidents – tragic accidents in which foolish mistakes are made that can never be unmade, often as a result of human weakness and fragility. It’s a devastating story as a result, but so marvelously contrived that I was hooked from the opening lines despite the devastation I left in my wake from page to page. It’s a quick read and all the more startlingly horrible for its sparse prose. Bailey is definitely on my watch list after this one…

Thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.

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