We Haunt These Woods by Holley Cornetto

We Haunt These Woods Reviews

• 
  Jack

  A devious and devilish little read from a strong voice in the indie horror scene.
  
  Short and sweet, We Haunt These Woods contains everything I want in a spooky short story. Conflicted and layered characters, a unique and powerful evil entity, and well-drawn tension occasionally broken up by dark humor.
  
  I was fortunate enough to be selected by publisher Bleeding Edge Books to review not only their existing titles, but their upcoming releases as well. Since Holley and I are friends on social media, both part of the same burgeoning group of online indie authors, I wanted to start with her material first. I had not read any of her works beforehand, but I am now a fan, and will be checking out her other offerings as time permits.
  
  Disclaimer: I was sent We Haunt These Woods from Bleeding Edge as an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I take my reviews seriously, and do not let free books sway my opinion in any way. Honestly, if this title is indicative of the overall quality of their works, I will be adding more of their catalog to my TBR.
  
  As with all of my reviews, I will attempt to keep spoilers to a minimum. I firmly believe that books of all types have greater impact when the reader goes in blind. As a writer, I also struggle when plot twists or revelations are blatantly spoiled in some off-hand manner. Some of those narrative points are difficult to come up with or jot down, and IMO deserve to be enjoyed unfiltered. So, if it’s not mentioned in the official synopsis, I will do my level best to avoid mentioning it here.
  
  Here's what you need to know up front: We Haunt These Woods clocks in at about 27,000 words. It is written from a first-person perspective, featuring chapters that alternate between current events as well as flashbacks. Though there are a handful of supporting characters, this is a single-POV affair, sticking with the same character’s perspective from start to finish.
  
  Before anything else, it needs to be said that Holley Cornetto’s writing is on point. She has a firm grasp of writing in an accessible manner, putting that knowledge to good use. Her story is neither obtuse nor simple, but resides in that sweet spot between the two extremes. One of the most difficult aspects of reading certain indie works is figuring out the author’s narrative voice (if they have one). Some books, though written with technical proficiency, are terribly dry reads. On the other side of the coin, all of the great ideas in the world don’t come across well when the writing is a hot mess. Holley threads the needle perfectly, keeping the story moving along at a quick pace without bogging it down with excessive passages, eschewing long-form paragraphs for shorter, punchier options. The result is a story that never really takes its foot off the gas.
  
  As stated earlier, the entirety of We Haunt These Woods is told from a single POV, that of a troubled man named Nate. He is a character with a hefty amount of emotional baggage, which happen to be my favorite kind. The myriad things that weigh heavy on his heart and soul become clear about halfway through the story, and are times relatable and horrible. Given the numerous flashback chapters, it was quite interesting to see the dichotomy between the child he was and the man he has become. I was also curious to see how well Holley would do with an entire short-story written from the male perspective. All in all, she was pretty spot on!
  
  The supporting characters are a varied lot, each haunted and tormented by their shared past, but they were all interesting in their own way. Jennifer is the only character that gets nearly as much page time as Nate, with Lee and Brandon filling in more minor roles. Had the story been any longer, it probably would have required at least two POV characters to really flesh it out. As it stands, one was more than enough.
  
  I also really enjoyed how nothing went quite as planned for any of the characters. Sometimes they met the sudden changes with grace, other times not so much. But that’s pretty much how things go in real life, and I was grateful that the plotting took into account life’s little foibles and upheavals.
  
  As for the villain, it’s an interesting entity, with a backstory/origin that I wish had been visited a bit more. But the concept is sound and the menace is palpable. We Haunt These Woods is ultimately more of a psychological horror as opposed to a creature-feature, so the entity isn’t front and center. But I feel that decision was a wise one.
  
  On the technical front, I had very few nitpicks. There were a couple instances of word repetition, and a handful of places where a little more descriptive text would have worked wonders, but outside of that this is a very well-written tale. Kudos to Holley and Bleeding Edge Books for releasing such a quality product.
  
  My only other gripe is that the story ends right when there’s the potential for a big reveal. As an author, I completely understand the reasoning behind it. As a reader, I wanted more from that reveal. So, yeah, that’s just my own little bit of wishful thinking.
  
  For those that need to know such things, We Haunt These Woods is more of a psychological horror than a physical one. Gore is minimal, as are other adult situations or language. This really is a tale that can be enjoyed by most age groups.
  
  If you’ve got a hankering for a short & spooky tale, and prefer your stories to be a healthy balance between character and plot driven, give We Haunt These Woods a read. I finished it in less than two hours, but the story stuck with me long afterwards. That’s a win no matter how you look at it!
• 
  Rebecca

  Childhood occupies a special station in the realm of horror fiction. Is this because of its innate connection to a loss of innocence? The harried confusion surrounding a formation of identity? Regardless, childhood—and adolescence—have been plentiful fodder for terror mainstays, including King’s It, Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl, and Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.
  
  We Haunt These Woods joins this arsenal of bildungsroman as author Cornetto juxtaposes a group of 12-year-olds with their adult selves, sweeping forward and back in time in order to methodically build a tale that is not only suspenseful but creepy as hell.
  Read the rest of this review on Horror Tree
• 
  Austin Shirey

  WE HAUNT THESE WOODS is a masterful piece of coming-of-age horror. Holley Cornetto deftly uses two intertwining timelines to examine friendship, folklore, and the trauma we carry with us from childhood. Her characters, and the Forest Man himself, will haunt you long after you finish reading this wonderful novella. I LOVED this book!
• 
  Iseult Murphy

  What a creepy book!
  
  This is an unputdownable creepy, atmospheric story, made all the more haunting because so much is left to the imagination.
  
  Nate has been haunted for 20 years by the disappearance of his friends over a fateful summer by the lake. Told alternating between 13 year old Nate and adult Nate, the tale shows the impact of trauma, tragedy, grief, loss and guilt as well as one very scary ‘thing’ lurking in the woods.
  
  The different characters are realistic, both as kids and adults, and I love how that summer impacts them as adults. Just as they all reacted to the weirdness in their own way, they’ve all survived - or crumbled - in its aftermath.
  
  The folk or preternatural horror of this story gets under your skin and is seriously creepy. It’s scary and horrible and sad. I loved it!
• 
  Laurel

  A dark, folkloric coming of age tale. Highly enjoyable.
• 
  D Gillis

  I’m sure I’m not the only horror reader whose tastes run to coming-of-age horror as summer unfolds. My childhood summers involved a list of chores and then freedom. We ranged far and wide, unsupervised, only circling back home in time for dinner, and then back out till dark. These kind of days are the basis for some great horror stories so when Bleeding Edge Books reached out, mentioning a coming-of-age novella, I jumped on it.
  
  We Haunt These Woods opens with childhood friends Nate and Jennifer meeting up after many years. They survived the traumatic disappearance of some of their friends under mysterious circumstances when they were kids. Nate put it behind him, while Jennifer carries the past with her. When she says “Tell me what you remember” he answers “The song. I can’t forget that song.” By the end of the evening they decide to meet up with the other survivors and head back to their abandoned family cabins in the woods and face their past. Nate is convinced that what’s out in the woods is nothing more than childish delusions and he’s willing to bet his life on it.
  
  I really enjoyed this novella! The story hooked me right in and the author did a great job of creating believable characters, especially the kids. I loved the use of folklore but I would’ve liked a little more info in that regard. The switch between the two timelines was seamless and really helped build the ominous atmosphere. This creepy coming-of-age tale is perfect summer reading! Release date is 7/19. Thanks to Bleeding Edge Books for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
  
• 
  Betwixt the Pages

  Rating: 3/5 Penguins
  Quick Reasons: perfect for spooky season; interesting play on "monster"; quick read; slightly unsatisfying/abrupt ending
  
  HUGE thanks to Holley Cornetto and Bleeding Edge Books for sending a free copy of this novella my way in exchange for a review! This in no way altered my read of or opinions on this title.
  
  He patted my shoulder. "Well, son. I think it's because some of us outgrow magic and wonder, but we never outgrow fear. Not entirely."
  
  This book unfolded with an almost dreamlike, otherworldly feeling--as if we were peeling back the layers between our world and the horrifying realities of the shadows that haunt us, and finding the answers we least wanted while we journeyed. The characters were realistically written and dogged by the monsters of their past at every turn of the page.
  
  While this world drew me in and kept me lurking on the edge of my seat in turn, I felt a bit slighted at the abrupt ending that did not really provide much in the way of answers. It was as if I were on a run-away train that just sort of...petered out at the end. I would have loved a little more of a PUSH...while an ending such as this can lead to a reader's ability to craft their own theories, I felt as if I were left with many more questions than I had answers for.
  
  Stumps didn't just come alive and start snatching children. Corpses didn't hide out in caves in the middle of the forest. And even if any of this was possible, it didn't explain why the cave had vanished when Brandon led the police there.
  
  Regardless, this was a breathless read that swept me up and refused to put me down until the end. The characters were human and believable, and this novella is perfect for the spooky season. If you're a fan of ghost stories and horror lore, I definitely recommend picking this quick read up! Happy haunting, y'all.
• 
  Damien Casey

  Something about the title to Holley Cornetto’s We Haunt These Woods really creeped me out. The cover, the title, the back of the book saying something about Forest Man(I go into books blind usually because sometimes back of book ruins it for me, so just seeing those words). The book itself lived up to the initial feeling of eerie I experienced just doing a quick glance. Cornetto does something special with the time jumps in her story, jumping back and forth between the past and the current seamlessly. The effect of this added to the feeling that something was sitting behind my shoulder reading along. The Forest Man is presented as a modern folk tale of sorts and honestly, I could see kids sitting at a campground talking about it and losing sleep. To me, this story read like if the FIRST Nightmare on Elm Street movie was a folk horror movie. The scenes are fleshed out in the same way; you can feel the bark of the trees, you can smell the leaves, and most importantly you can feel the tension at the same level as the characters. Go sit on the edge of the woods and read this book. K thx.
• 
  Julie _ themysterymaven

  As the school year winds down, this was the perfect novella to read, recalling those lazy days of childhood summers, spent in a haze of long days and finding fun with friends..the misadventures of youth. But here, we have a group of kids who spend their breaks each year together on a lake, their families cozied up in cabins in a small, secluded seasonal community.
  
  And then one of them disappears in the woods.
  
  And another.
  
  And it all seems to stem from a cave they’ve found on an off-beaten path, that boasts strange symbols and an unsettling tree stump upon which trinkets from the missing hang like ornaments…or offerings.
  
  Creepy kids, a campground setting, and a folkloric legend of The Forest Man, who lures children off to play, never to be seen again…this story ticks a lot of boxes on my list of favorite eerie elements to read! I only wish it had been longer, allowing us to see a fuller vision of the author’s imaginings, as I really enjoyed the scenes and the set-up. A fun little book all the same!
• 
  Hayley Surabian

  Nate and Jennifer have been haunted for 20 years by the mysterious disappearance of their friends at the lake. When Nate gets the idea to take Jennifer back to the lake to show her that it was just a freak accident that their friends went missing and not the work of the Forest Man, things go horribly wrong. The way that Holly tells the story from the perspective of Nate as an adult and Nate as a young teenager makes for a seamlessly quick and creepy read. I really enjoyed the way that this story was written and it caught my attention from the beginning and made for a very memorable read.
  
  Make sure to watch out for the Forest Man!
• 
  Dawn Colclasure

  Gripping and scary story!
  
  I was reading this book for research but it really pulled me in and it was hard to stop reading! The story is really good and I enjoyed reading it. It reminded me of how we try to make sense of the unexplained or use science to understand it, but none of that works. We think we’re kids imagining things, except we’re not. There were very spooky scenes in this story and it had me reading more to find out what happens next. It is a scary story that is the stuff of nightmares! Very well written and put together very well. It’s a story I won’t soon forget.
• 
  Benjamin DeHaan

  Holley Cornetto is an author that really knows how to make the reader feel uneasy and anxious (which is a good thing). The more I read, the more I felt a sense that something very bad was going to happen and the more I cared for the characters. This is a coming-of-age story that pushes the narrative tension to the max and makes you wonder when everything is just going to snap. Bleeding Edge Books is a publisher I will definitely be following hereafter. Overall I liked the interweaving of the two story timelines and the folklore feel. This is a novella that is not to be missed.
• 
  Ivy Grimes

  This novella has great classic horror vibes and page-turning action. A gruesome mystery in the woods changes everything for a group of friends. As adults, the survivors go on a quest to understand what happened to them as children and to battle with an old foe. Along the way, they have to confront their own worst impulses.
• 
  Corinne Pollard

  We Haunt These Woods dives into childhood fears, which, as we age, we explain it away or forget. A wonderful exploration of trauma. The horror builds and teases with no clear explanation, allowing imagination to amplify the tension and fear. It is a great bite-sized story I can imagine could be read around a campfire amongst the woods and passed down campers for years to come.
• 
  Lene MacLeod

  This book was a quick read thanks to the author's skill at telling the story seamlessly between two time periods. Haunting, chilling, and memorable, this tale is coming-of-age horror at its finest, with the eeriness of dark folklore.
• 
  Maryanne Chappell

  I just finished We Haunt These Woods by Holley Cornetto and loved it! This is my second book of hers that I've read and can tell you she's the real deal! She wove this story through a dual timeline that was seamless and well written. A gripping story, that is definitely worth the read!
• 
  Rebecca

  Loved this quick, creepy read! It does a great job of alternating between two timelines 20 years apart, without losing tension. I wrote about it more extensively here, if anyone wants to check it out:
  https://www.undertakerbooks.com/weeke...
• 
  Kayleigh Marie Marie

  GREAT novella. Very creepy, scary mystery, relatable characters - it has it all.
• 
  Charlotte Unwin

  A creepy read that I finished in one sitting, I couldn't put this book down and I would love to see it adapted into a film some day! The perfect spooky October read!
• 
  Happy Goat

  Full review at Happy Goat Horror:
  
  https://happygoathorror.com/2022/11/0...
  
  This novella is the perfect storm of everything I love in a story. Past/present formatting so we get to follow dual timelines, a mysterious, supernatural hook akin to the horrors of folklore and local legend, compelling characters, and the setting of the woods.