The Killing Woods

Gr 9 Up—Emily Shepherd looks out the window in the early morning and sees her father carrying something through the woods. A deer? No, it's the body of a teenage girl. And Emily knows her: it's Ashlee Parker, a classmate, and girlfriend of football star Damon Hilary. Emily's dad, who suffers from extreme post-traumatic stress disorder, is accused of the murder, and it is up to her to find out what really happened in the woods that horrible night. The first two-thirds of the story is taut, suspenseful, and very intense: characters are revealed in complex layers, and the woods take on an eerie personality of their own. Teens will read voraciously, seeking out answers and the truth, instantly recognizing Emily and Damon as unreliable narrators. However, the novel gets bogged down with repetitious dialogue and descriptions. In the early chapters, Christopher dribbles out details in deliciously tantalizing ways, but at the story's midpoint, the author withholds too much, and the plot begins to move at a snail's pace. At the peak of the action, intensely exciting moments are broken up by mundane details that kill the lightning-fast pace. Ultimately, though, like Chris Lynch's Inexcusable (S & S, 2005), this is a fascinating discussion of teen violence, self-denial, and conspiracies of silence. And even though readers will likely guess the culprit before the protagonists do, they'll still be hanging on to every word until the end.—Laura Lutz, Convent of the Sacred Heart, New York City