Recommended: THE LYING WOODS by Ashley Elston

Publisher’s Description

Owen Foster has never wanted for anything. Then his mother shows up at his elite New Orleans boarding school cradling a bombshell: his privileged life has been funded by stolen money. After using the family business, the single largest employer in his small Louisiana town, to embezzle millions and drain the employees’ retirement accounts, Owen’s father vanished without a trace, leaving Owen and his mother to deal with the fallout.

Owen returns to Lake Cane to finish his senior year, where people he hardly remembers despise him for his father’s crimes. It’s bad enough dealing with muttered insults and glares, but when Owen and his mother receive increasingly frightening threats from someone out for revenge, he knows he must get to the bottom of what really happened at Louisiana Frac…and the cryptic note his father sent him at his boarding school days before disappearing.

Owen’s only refuge is the sprawling, isolated pecan orchard he works at after school, owned by a man named Gus who has his own secrets–and in some ways seems to know Owen better than he knows himself. As Owen uncovers a terrible injustice that looms over the same Preacher Woods he’s claimed as his own, he must face a shocking truth about his past–and write a better future.

Rebecca’s Thoughts

I wasn’t sure I was going to connect with a character with Owen’s privileged background. But the privilege is stripped from him right at the start of the story and he’s placed in one painful situation after another. Neighbors gawk and the paparazzi snap pictures whenever he leaves the house, whispers and stares follow him through the school halls, there’s an uncomfortable distance between him and his best friend from grammar school, his only potential friend. Everyone else at school is brimming with accusations. Owen turns down the chance to escape all this by returning to his old school, unwilling to leave his mother to deal with the scandal’s fallout alone or abandon his search for the truth.

Elston skillfully weaves together two separate narratives with different time periods: Owen’s present and the time when his mother and father met. Both narratives are compelling and move the story forward. The ending is super-twisty and entirely satisfying. The Lying Woods is a great read for people who like a who-dun-it done well enough that they can’t see the ending coming! Highly Recommended!

The Lying Woods will be released on November 13th. You can check it out on Goodreads or order from Indiebound, Am azon, or Barnes & Noble.

I requested an advanced reader copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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