Book Review: Alone in the Woods by Charly Cox

Thanks to Hera Books and Netgalley for my copy of this book

I've come to expect a high octane, addictive read from Charly Cox's Detective Alyssa Wyatt's series and in Alone in the Woods I was most certainly not disappointed. 

But first .... Here's the blurb

Alone in the Woods

Available here

The sudden appearance of a man’s booted feet had Addis snapping her mouth shut.
Screaming, she kicked out at the tall, muscular guy as he dragged her from beneath the desk...

It was a scene from a horror movie; Gabriel Kensington and his wife Lydia found, brutally slain in their luxurious home in New Mexico. The frantic, whispered phone call from their teenage daughter Addis, spending the evening with best friend Emerson, quickly alerts the authorities to the killings – and worse, that the killer is still inside the house. 

But when detective Alyssa Wyatt and the squad appear at the house, the unthinkable has happened – the girls are nowhere to be found. 

Waking up in a dilapidated cabin, nestled high in the woods north of Albuquerque, the girls find themselves at the mercy of a brutal stranger who could take their life at any moment. While they fight for survival, it’s up to Alyssa Wyatt and her partner Cord to discover just why the Kensingtons have been targeted – and fast. 

Because for Addis and Emerson, solving this mystery might just mean the difference between survival – or an unthinkable death...

My Thoughts

Oh my goodness! Alone in the Woods kicked off at a rate of knots and never really stopped. Told in turn from the investigative team's, the perpetrator's and the two missing girl's points of view, Alone in the Woods was a study in how to wring the reader's emotions. 

I was drawn from crossing my fingers (and toes) for the girls, clenching my fists for the perps and smiling at some good news for Wyatt's team. 

Cox doesn't hold back on the emotional string pulling - she's very adept at weaving story lines together to squeeze the maximum emotional connection from the reader and that had me reading on compulsively till the end. 

As well as that, Cox drops clues in from very early on in the story and I had to go back to pick up on them  with an 'Oh no! How the hell did I not see the significance of that.' 

She also keeps the team dynamics to the forefront and that is becoming one of my favourite aspects of the series. From the moody police receptionist Ruby, to the varied police team, each with their own demons to fight. I also love that we see Wyatt in her home environment - It's good to see an older woman, with kids, cracking on with such a hard job with the support of a doting partner. 

Alone in the Woods will keep you guessing till the end, with Cox dropping the breadcrumbs to lead you down the wrong path with ease and aplomb. Thoroughly enjoyable 

Author Bio

Born in the South, raised in the Midwest, Charly now resides in the Southwest in the Land of Enchantment, Green Chile capital of the world, which is good because she enjoys eating copious amounts of the spicy food. When she's not reading, writing, or plotting sinister evils with her antagonists, she enjoys doing jigsaw and crossword puzzles, hanging out with her husband and her spoiled Siberian Husky, visiting her son in Arizona, and traveling, preferably to places surrounded by sun, sand, and warm uncrowded beaches.