There’s something in the woods, and it has been waiting for someone to notice. Carrie Lee South’s In the Woods They Wait is an atmospheric Southern Gothic horror novel about grief, guilt, missing children, and an ancient presence lurking in the woods. The slow-burn mystery kept me reading, but the rushed final act and underwhelming reveal kept the novel from reaching its full potential.
In Carrie Lee South’s In the Woods They Wait, the woods surrounding Devil’s Den State Park are more than a backdrop. They are a presence—ancient, watchful, and seemingly hungry. Fifteen years after Audrey Figg’s younger brother, Benny, disappeared from the park, she has made a life for herself among the very trees that swallowed him. As a park ranger with expertise in wilderness search and rescue, Audrey has turned her grief into a vocation, spending her days protecting hikers and searching the backcountry for the person she has never stopped hoping to find. When a young girl named Ivy disappears from the same woods, Audrey sees too many similarities to Benny’s disappearance to believe it is a coincidence.
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