When looking for a really good summer read I came across The God of the Woods by Liz Moore in Barack Obama’s summer reading list from 2024 and it lived up to and surpassed my expectations of a completely gripping summer read, in the way that The Paper Palace and Where the Crawdads Sing have done for me in previous summers.

This thriller is set in a perfect summer setting – a summer camp in the Adirondack mountains in 1975, where American children are sent for weeks without their parents to sink or swim, with only camp counsellors to rely on, from as young as eight years old. The protagonists of this story include the rich Van Laar family whose summer house is at the top of the hill and who own the camp, local camp counsellors trying to make ends meet, campers themselves, going through usual teenage angst, and some extremely relatable police officers and local people caught up in the goings on at the camp.

The backdrop to all of this is the mysterious disappearance fourteen years earlier of Bear Van Laar, who was aged eight when he vanished in the woods and then the disappearance of his older sister Barbara, who he never knew, and who is now aged thirteen herself. There are suspects aplenty – people disappearing into dark nights, not being where they should be, affairs are happening in secret and a serial killer is on the loose, as the novel flicks backwards and forwards in time, keeping you safely oriented with clever chapter sub-headings which signal which time period the chapter is set in.

I absolutely loved this novel. It really was the perfect summer read and I was very sad to reach its perfect ending.