Kate Alice Marshall, best known for her young adult and middle grade novels, makes her adult debut with WHAT LIES IN THE WOODS. This heady, terrifying thriller is about the magic of childhood, the ownership of truths and stories, and the darkest secrets of small-town life.

As a young girl living in Chester, Washington, Naomi Shaw and her best friends discovered magic in the woods surrounding their dead-end mill town. Not the magic of fairies or witches, but the kind that is only found in the beliefs of little girls and the secrets they share. Along with Cassidy and Olivia/Liv, Naomi created a world where they were warriors, queens and even goddesses, and fern leaves and dandelions were poultices and potions.

As one of the final games the girls played during their last summer as children, they became the Greek goddesses Artemis, Athena and Hecate, singing incantations to the trees around them and making offerings to a fourth goddess, Persephone. But their games came to a tragic and abrupt end when Cassidy and Liv emerged from the woods one day drenched in blood, saying that a man had killed their best friend.

"The tension throughout the story is palpable, almost bordering on the chills one feels when reading horror, and Marshall’s powerful descriptions of everything from grief to mill-town life and female friendships are skewering and deeply immersive."

As it turns out, Cassidy and Liv weren’t entirely right. Stabbed 17 times, Naomi survived with a brutal scar across her face and a chip on her shoulder. Although the girls remained close --- after all, who else could relate to what they’d been through? --- the subsequent court case where they helped put serial killer Allan Michael Stahl in jail for life turned them into town celebrities and made talking about that day in the woods nearly impossible, with all eyes (and ears, microphones and cameras) on them.

Twenty-two years have passed since the girls discussed what happened in the woods. But when Naomi receives a call from her victim support line that Stahl has died, putting an end to their terror, Liv calls an urgent meeting. The least mentally stable of the trio, Liv often experiences some kind of paranoia or panic, but this time she is adamant that they meet in Chester, the town Naomi has tried to avoid for decades. Far from celebrating the death of the man who nearly ended their lives, Liv has something shocking to discuss: she is done lying and wants to tell the world what they really found in the woods.

As they grapple with Liv’s revelation, flashes of their pasts in Chester come rushing back to Naomi, who has tried to forget everything about her hometown --- from Cody, the young man who carried her nearly lifeless body out of the woods, to her cranky hoarder father, and especially Cassidy’s mean older brother, who also traumatized her that summer. There are things about her past and the witchy games they played that Naomi also wants to keep hidden, including the fact that, although it was her testimony alone that sent Stahl to prison, she cannot actually recall seeing him at the time of her attack. She knows that the world loves to villainize and pick apart an imperfect victim, and while all children believe in magic to some degree, she often wonders if their goddess games went too far or became too devious.

But when Liv is found dead, it becomes clear that someone else knows what actually transpired in the woods, and they want to make sure that the girls stay quiet about it. Desperate to find out what happened to her friend and equally focused on uncovering the truth about her attacker, Naomi teams up with a podcaster, Ethan Schreiber, who is in town reporting on the case after increased interest following Stahl’s death. But does she want to find out what really happened, or is she just trying to prove that she didn’t do anything wrong?

With Ethan digging into her every memory, big-time Chester players --- from the mayor to the detective who originally solved the case, and even golden girl Cassidy --- putting pressure on her to believe certain truths while burying others, and her own memory foggy, Naomi must return to the darkest, most traumatizing moment of her life to ask what she really saw and why someone wants her to forget it.

Marshall captures the heady innocence and magic of childhood, but turns an adult gaze on earlier moments of naivete to shine a bright, unflinching light on Naomi, Liv and Cassidy’s memories. What readers find are uncomfortable truths --- a town that is loyal to a fault but will turn a blind eye to the crimes of certain connected people, and a dark underbelly of violence that exists everywhere but is amplified in a town with nothing more to lose.

The tension throughout the story is palpable, almost bordering on the chills one feels when reading horror, and Marshall’s powerful descriptions of everything from grief to mill-town life and female friendships are skewering and deeply immersive. While at times I felt that Marshall did not get into the heads of her adult characters as well as she did during their childhood flashbacks, her non-stop reveals of secrets and betrayals provided a thorough grounding and helped me relate to them. These minor quibbles are easily ignored thanks to her emotionally involved narrative and propulsive thriller premise.

Already a powerhouse in YA circles, Marshall is more than ready to take on the world of adult fiction with this unnerving and unforgettable tale of the power of not just knowing the truth, but owning the telling of it.