“AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF 2024
WINNER OF GOODREADS MYSTERY & THRILLER BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024
When their thirteen-year-old daughter Barbara goes missing at summer camp, all eyes fall on the Van Laar family.
They’re cold, rich people. They own the camp. And it’s happened to them before.
Fourteen years ago their little boy, Bear, vanished without a trace. Two children lost to the same wilderness.
Is it a tragedy… or a crime?”
Hello and welcome to damppebbles. Today I am delighted to share my review of The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. The God of the Woods is published in paperback by The Borough Press today (that’s 31st July 2025) and is already available in hardcover, audio and digital formats. I chose to read a free eARC of The God of the Woods but that has in no way influenced my review.
Yes, it appears I am one of the last few people on the planet to read this book. Having been first published last year, The God of the Woods has been accumulating awards and accolades since then. And rightly so! It’s now set to be published in paperback, with a gorgeous new cover, and I hope those remaining few who haven’t read this stunning literary mystery now get their chance.
Camp Emerson is where the well-to-do of New York send their children for the summer. Set in the grounds of the Van Laar Preserve and overlooked by Self Reliance, the Van Laars second home, the camp has become a mainstay for the wealthy of New York to get a break from their offspring for a few blissful months. As the camp of 1975 nears its end, camp counsellor Louise raises the alarm. One of her campers is missing. It’s thirteen-year-old Barbara, daughter of Peter and Alice Van Laar, the owners of the camp. But this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has gone missing from the area. Fourteen years ago, before Barbara was even born, her brother, Bear, disappeared. Following a desperate search, the only clue found was an intricate wooden carving of a bear. Now, Barbara has vanished into the night without a trace and once again, all eyes are on the Van Laar family…
I loved The God of the Woods. This book deserves the hype it’s received, and I hope it continues to grab readers’ attention for many years to come. Definitely one for my ‘top books of the year’ list. The two Van Laar children disappear from the family’s estate fourteen years apart. Are the Van Laars just horribly unlucky, or is there something more sinister going on? The God of the Woods is a sublime character-driven mystery. Told using dual historical timelines, the reader gets to see the impact of Bear’s disappearance in 1961, the effect that it has on Bear’s mother, as well as the community, and how this latest, more modern-day disappearance (1975) affects the Van Laar family. Eight-year-old Bear was Alice’s everything. Stuck in a loveless, almost arranged marriage, Alice makes her son the centre of her world. Generally, life is pretty miserable for Alice. This is the 1950s/1960s, so attitudes and approaches are quite different to what we consider to be ‘normal’ these days. When Bear doesn’t return home, life as Alice knows it shatters. Bear’s body is never found, but Carl Stoddard, a local man and a gardener at the preserve, is arrested and charged with his abduction. Fast forward fourteen years, and thirteen-year-old Barbara Van Laar is attending Camp Emerson (in the Van Laar grounds) for the very first time. Barbara is a spirited teenager and has a…complicated relationship with her parents. So when Louise, an experienced counsellor herself, raises the alarm, everyone hopes it’s not Barbara who has gone missing. Can the Van Laar family, and Alice in particular, realistically deal with the trauma of a second missing child?
Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. The God of the Woods is a sublime literary mystery where the characters are flawed and nuanced, the plot is instantly absorbing, and the setting comes to life on the page. The writing is engaging and compelling. Once you’ve made a start on the book, you HAVE to know what happened to Bear and just how much danger Barbara is in. I was fully invested in the story. I found the chapters detailing the search for Bear fascinating. Is everyone telling the truth? How does an eight-year-old boy disappear without a trace? With a bungled investigation, with biased cops at the helm, did Bear ever really stand a chance? Carl Stoddard certainly didn’t. With Bear’s disappearance still weighing heavily on the community, all the stops are pulled out to find Barbara. The New York State Bureau of Criminal Investigation are called in, bringing the state’s first female investigator, Judyta Luptack, into the investigation. I loved Judy. I loved everything she stood for, her drive, and despite everything being against her, her sheer determination to succeed. I really hope this isn’t the last we see of this character. Can Judy and her partner, Denny, discover what happened to Barbara and find her before it’s too late…? All in all, I adored The God of the Woods. It’s a well-written, highly engaging mystery with a lot for the reader to get their teeth into. I believed in the characters (there are quite a few key players, but it was easy to keep track of who was who, particularly when several of them are called ‘Peter’!). I adored the setting of the book, which adds an eerie, atmospheric charm to the novel. Beautiful, yet ultimately dangerous and potentially devastating. The mystery element was strong with the reveal of what actually happened to Bear being so shocking, it nearly brought me to tears. An ultimately satisfying, engrossing gem of a book. Highly recommended.
I chose to read and review a free eARC of The God of the Woods. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.
The God of the Woods by Liz Moore was published in the UK by The Borough Press on 31st July 2025 and is available in hardcover, paperback, audio and digital formats (please note, the following links are affiliate links which means I receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no extra cost to you): | amazon.co.uk | Waterstones | bookshop.org | Goodreads | damppebbles bookshop.org shop | damppebbles amazon.co.uk shop | damppebbles amazon.com shop |
Liz Moore is the author of five novels: The Words of Every Song, Heft, The Unseen World, the New York Times-bestselling Long Bright River, and The God of the Woods. A winner of the 2014 Rome Prize in Literature, she lives in Philadelphia and teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Temple University.
