When Winter’s dad goes missing during his nightly patrol of the wood, it falls to her to patrol the time portals and protect the travelers who slip through them. Winter can't help but think there's more to her dad's disappearance than she's being told.
She soon finds a young man traveling in the wood named Henry who knows more than he should. He believes if they can work together to find his missing parents, they could discover the truth about Winter’s dad.
The wood is poisoned, changing into something sinister—torturing travelers lost in it. Winter must put her trust in Henry in order to find the truth and those they’ve lost.
I tried, I really did.
The Wood has an interesting premise. Time travel and a sick forest? Sign me up! Also, the cover is really pretty. But there was not any blood or gore in this novel. If there was, it was minimal and not integral to the overall plot.
This book had an interesting premise and set-up, but it took its sweet time getting anywhere. One of the first things I noticed was the amount of "filler" that set up the in between scenes when nothing was going on. The filler stuff didn't amount to much which detracted heavily from the novel and added an amount of boredom to my reading experience leading me to skim-read or ask that dreaded question again that I mentioned last year in my Indelible review: so what? If this little moment or scene isn't adding anything to the overall story, what is its purpose to the novel besides filling in gaps that don't necessarily need to be filled in? It's called reading in between the lines. Bobulski does have a good writing style, she really does, especially when it comes to romance, but I didn't understand the need to put in unnecessary moments and scenes when stuff wasn't going down.
While I did not mind the character of Winter, I found her to indulge in the typical YA cliches a lot, like not telling her mom about the eighteenth century man she's keeping in her bedroom, or her best friend that she has to protect the woods and the people that inadvertently find their way into. Like ... shouldn't that be information you divulge to two of your most important people? I found the best friend character Meredith to be grating from time to time but perhaps if she had been developed or have more page-time, I would have received her better. The only two characters that are well-developed are Winter and Henry, who just oozes Ichabod Crane from the TV show Sleepy Hollow (which was an awful show past season 1, don't watch it).
The Wood lacked that pull that novels of this type should have. I should want to keep reading. I should want to know what happens next. But I didn't really. I finished it. It got better at maintaining the "pull" in the latter half, but the first half was a drudge to get through. The twist of who the bad guy was was also very predictable. I was not surprised in the slightest. My non-surprise of the villain's true identity could speak for the rest of the novel - I was not fazed by much in this book, which made it forgettable and easier to put down in favour of doing something else.
The Wood isn't an awful book. It's not the greatest book ever, either. It's very bland in a lot of places, however. It did not do what was advertised in the summary on the back of the book. It had some good moments, and Bobulski has a good writing style, but that does not redeem all of the book's shortcomings. I'm going to give The Wood 2.5/5 - it's okay, but it's bogged down by many unnecessary and/or predictable moments.
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