Ratings31
Average rating3.9
A father and daughter living in the remote Appalachian mountains must reckon with the ghosts of their past in Kimi Cunningham Grant's These Silent Woods, a mesmerizing novel of suspense.
No electricity, no family, no connection to the outside world.
For eight years, Cooper and his young daughter, Finch, have lived in isolation in a remote cabin in the northern Appalachian woods. And that's exactly the way Cooper wants it, because he's got a lot to hide. Finch has been raised on the books filling the cabin’s shelves and the beautiful but brutal code of life in the wilderness. But she’s starting to push back against the sheltered life Cooper has created for her—and he’s still haunted by the painful truth of what it took to get them there.
The only people who know they exist are a mysterious local hermit named Scotland, and Cooper's old friend, Jake, who visits each winter to bring them food and supplies. But this year, Jake doesn't show up, setting off an irreversible chain of events that reveals just how precarious their situation really is. Suddenly, the boundaries of their safe haven have blurred—and when a stranger wanders into their woods, Finch’s growing obsession with her could put them all in danger. After a shocking disappearance threatens to upend the only life Finch has ever known, Cooper is forced to decide whether to keep hiding—or finally face the sins of his past.
Vividly atmospheric and masterfully tense, These Silent Woods is a poignant story of survival, sacrifice, and how far a father will go when faced with losing it all.
Reviews with the most likes.
I liked this one! For some reason I couldn't get this casting out of my head ha
Cooper - Casey Affleck
Marie - Rebecca Hall
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.
3.5 ⭐
I feel like this book was not very thriller-y. It was a good book that definitely made me cry at the end, but I was bracing myself for something more the whole time