A review by toofondofbooks_
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0


This book is about a bachelorette party gone wrong: murder, mayhem, and spooky shit ensues. I have quite a few complaints about this one but as per usual, I want to start with positives because I like to be generous and also because I did like this book, there were just things I wanted from it that I didn't get. I thought the writing was lovely. Ruth Ware is very obviously great at building suspense, setting the scene for horror, and writing tense scenes between characters. Some of my favorite scenes were scenes where characters were fighting or bitching about one another. I lived for the drama of it all.

My main complaint is this: Reese Witherspoon says on the cover blurb that I'm going to be "really scared." I was not. This book undoubtedly had its moments where I was very invested in figuring out what happened, but there were such long stretches of pages where I felt that things were getting repetitive and if something didn't happen soon, this was going to go into the DNF graveyard. However, a lot of times, the moment I had that thought, something would happen; it just was never scary enough to make me feel anything. I also felt like after a certain point, it was really easy for me to put 2 and 2 together and figure out what the big twist was, which made the whole climax kind of a slog for me.

All in all, I do give this 3 stars because I think it was beautifully written, but perhaps not a favorite story for me specifically.
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