When you go into the woods in the dark what do you expect to find? This is the question that Vanessa Savage lets linger in her teen angst filled dark horror novel. With a narrative that splits between a haunted present and a mysterious past, we are sent along on a journey to help our narrator untangle the twisted web of lies and deceit and answer the most popular question of all: whodunnit?
Our narrator is Tess. She’s a fully grown woman now, yet she is still obviously and deeply traumatized by the death of her sister, Bella, many years earlier. Bella is your typical “hot girl summer.” She’s tanned and beautiful and everybody wants to be all over her because she’s a little bit of a slut. You see, Bella has a wild side. A strong mind, a smart tongue and a lack of inhibitions that encourages the worst in everyone around her. Everyone except for her little sister, Tess. Tess idolizes her older sister, viewing her as the pretty and popular golden girl. In her childish eyes, Bella can do no wrong. That is, until two teenage boys move into a house nearby. With evenings spent in the woods doing drugs, partying and having sex, Tess becomes disillusioned with her sister. Yet still believes Bella has been corrupted by the influence of these boys and their friends, especially as her she becomes progressively more sullen and withdrawn in the events that lead up to her death.
In the present, Tess lives her sisters life, though she is not entirely sure that is what she wants. She’s a secondary school teacher who lives in the glamour of the big city. She spends cosmopolitan evenings in bars, eyeing up boys with her best friend. In a way, she never really grows up, and is shown to be a completely different person as soon as she leaves town. She leaves town to care for her father and her ailing step- mother, who is being ravaged by disease. Being home is hard for her, brings back too many painful memories, or lack thereof, ones which she ran away from the first chance she could. After various different encounters with the characters from her past, strange things begin to happen to Tess, and she beings to lose her grip on reality. As she struggles to remember what happened to her sister all those years ago, memories of the events leading up to her death begin to torment her. People she knew then aren’t as she remembers, hell- Tess isn’t even sure if she knows who she is any more, resulting in an unsettling, dark climax that doesn’t quite feel like it fills it’s fullest potential.
There are many things right with this novel. Though the narrative split can be rather annoying at times, it’s the novels most useful plot device. You experience the characters as they were as teenagers through Tess’s eyes, and you witness them in the present as they have developed. This throws Tess’s reliability as a narrator into question almost straight away as the people she describes aren’t always as they appear to be. It makes you wonder all the way through the novel whether what she is saying is true. This is especially effective when the manipulations of the other characters come in to play. Are they as cruel as she remembers? Are they manipulating her? Or is she creating an enemy out of them in order to cover up her own sins? Not being able to trust your narrator is the thing that keeps the story moving throughout the book.
As is very common in novels, the subplot is actually more interesting than the main story, and the scenes set in the past are a lot more entertaining to read than the ones set in the present. It’s hard to feel sympathy for Tess because you’d want to go hang out with Bella and her friends, too. Her narrative is unreliable and confusing, and as effective as that plot device is, it’s not particularly helpful when building a story. Bella’s story is more interesting to read, and is the only real reason you keep reading, because you do want to find out what happened to her. Through Tess’ narrative, she’s the most important character and as such, she is the most fleshed out. The supporting cast of characters feel like your same old high school ass holes, it would feel more engaging if there were more people in the book that you could connect to. With disconnection and alienation prominent themes within the novel, it is these traits that engages you as a reader in this lusty, anxious teenage world.
