The Dark Between the Trees by Fiona Barnett is an enjoyable read for those who like slow-burning horror stories that are not the scariest. I did enjoy the descriptions and the world created by Barnett and the variety of characters that lived past and present. There is always something intriguing about monsters lurking in the woods that ensnares me, making it inevitable that I will eventually read the story. For me, the present characters wanting to leave the woods and thinking they could just go no problem despite a tree next to them disappearing overnight, equipment failing, and changing environment bothered me as it made them dumb, and I was ready for them to get picked off one by one. But that makes the story. I recommend this book to those intrigued by what may be lurking in the woods and who enjoy light horror.

SYNOPSIS: This story is told from two different perspectives— and time periods.

One perspective is told from present day by a scientist named Dr. Alice Christopher, a PhD who has dedicated her career studying the Moresby Wood (in England)— the myths, legends, and stories. Though the stories are strange, it is the one about the missing soldiers that is most intriguing to Dr. Christopher; seventeen soldiers enter Morsbey Woods, and only two come out. What is even more perplexing is that the soldiers spoke of shifting landscapes, disappearing trees, and a monster.

After years of trying, Dr. Christopher finally acquires the financial backing (and approval) to fund a research trip for her and four other women to enter the forest and find out what happened to the group of soldiers. The mission seems pretty straight forward— until it isn’t; technology stops working, maps are proven in accurate, lies are told, and alliances are tested.

The second perspective takes place in 1643 and is told from the perspective of the soldiers who entered the Moresby Wood on their march north during a time of war. Shortly after entering the woods, the soldiers are ambushed, and the group flees deeper into the woods. The group suffers from a great number of serious injuries… and casualties. Some of the men who are from the area begin speaking of stories about the woods— how it’s unnatural, haunted, a realm of witchcraft, and even of a creature so horrid (The Corrigal), they dare not speak it’s name. Soldiers begin deserting their posts, disappear, dying from injuries, and internal conflict begins to rise.

NO SPOILER REVIEW: I found myself sucked into this novel, wanting to know what happened next. The author did a great job withholding information and kept the suspense building. This book is not scary in the “jump scare” sense, nor is it exceptionally gory, but it does have a spooky factor by not really describing (until close to the end) what is happening. The author also does a great job building the ambience and “personality” of the woods. I found it easy to picture the many moods of the forest, and it’s sinister/foreboding nature. Though the author split the book between two time periods, they enhanced each other well— you more or less learned about a section from the soldiers, and then experienced a similar area in the present day. The story ended differently than I was expecting, but still made sense; there isn’t any true closure to the story, which I kind of liked.

RATING: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

(Review and aesthetic photo will be shared on IG soon— @slowerlowerliving)

This has an interesting plot and I love the urban legend factor. The writing is good but I’m the beginning I had a hard time with the amount of characters- couldn’t keep track of who was who.

3.5 rounded up to 4.

1643: A small group of soldiers are ambushed in an isolated part of Northern England and their only hope for survival is to flee into the nearby Moresby Wood... an unnatural place, the realm of witchcraft and shadows, where the devil is said to go walking by moonlight...
Seventeen men enter the wood. Only two are ever seen again, and the stories they tell of what happened make no sense. Stories of shifting landscapes, of trees that appear and disappear at will... and of something else. Something dark. Something hungry.

Today: Five women are headed into Moresby Wood to discover, once and for all, what happened to that unfortunate group of soldiers. Led by Dr Alice Christopher, and armed with metal detectors, GPS units, mobile phones and the most recent map of the area (which is nearly 50 years old), Dr Christopher's group enters the wood ready for anything.
Or so they think.

I really enjoyed this dual-timeline story and thought that both storylines were well written, tense and depicted interesting and relatable characters. Both storylines were well paced and the switch between them after each chapter was a clever way of revealing important plot points; also having to make connections and discover links yourself was entertaining.

Nevertheless, I have to be honest that the ending is what made me drop my rating. I felt after all I had invested in the book and the characters that the ending was a little far fetched, seriously confusing and ultimately didn’t really answer any of my burning questions which was very disappointing. A shame because the rest of the book was great.

Although the story is based on an enticing idea I didn't love the story. It was very predictable and for a thriller/horror book seriously lacked in both darkness and twists. It's not to mention the underwhelming ending and it's many loose ends.
To be fair although this was only 200 pages long (on my Kobo e-reader), when I got to the last chapters I didn't even care about the characters anymore and just wanted to be over and done with it.

One thing the author did very well though is switching point of views/narration during the chapters. It was really smooth. I also really liked reading how the characters tried to cope with the situation of being lost in an everchanging, cold, foggy, scary forest. I thought however that the supernatural elements were just "there". The story is obviously built around it and yet it doesn't bring much? Generally, the supernatural is used to highlight some difficulty the characters are experiencing in their "normal lives" I don't really know what it was for here, nor were the rules it obeys very clear.

This was okay, but not something I'd personally recommend.

Whatever happens in Moresby Wood, stays in Moresby Wood. Or whoever. After centuries of legends and ghost stories and many disappearances, the Wood was closed. Now, a team of women gets permission to enter, to search for the remains of a group of soldiers that went missing in the XVII century. The story goes back and forth between the soldiers and the women. Two of the women are rangers to keep the group safe, but the obsession of the main researcher, a historian, ends up getting them lost. Though it may not be anyone’s fault, the woods are just changing. The parallels between both groups start showing, even if they all deal with them very differently. The novel is suspenseful and atmospheric. I don’t usually enjoy too much weirdness, but this is not the case here. It reminded me of the stories of Algernon Blackwood, especially The Willows. I didn’t know how it would end and I was pleasantly surprised at the final resolution. I liked the modern story a little better, maybe because the soldiers were so unrelatable to me. I connected with some of the women, even if I didn’t like their leader (I don’t think we’re supposed to). Although the main character is the Wood itself, described in such detail that it’s almost possible to feel the chill in the air. Enjoyable and creepy.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#Rebellion, Solaris!

THE PERFECT CREEPY STORY. In England, in the 1600's a group of soldiers are on the run from ambushes and are forced into Moresby Wood. Only 2 survive to tell the tale of a strange and haunted wood. Many years later a small group of women head into the same woods to try and discover what happened to those men. Lead by Dr. Alice Christopher, the women enter the wood without trepidation.

However when trees begin to appear and disappear and they find themselves completely lost, the group wonders - are they alone? Told from two timelines, and two supporting casts' point of view, this story is COMPLETELY TERRIFYING and will thrill all you Halloween lovers to death! If you love a creepy story, supernatural and unexplained phenomenon, if you want to stay up all night with the light on, The Dark Between The Trees is for you!
.#Rebellion #TheDarkBetweenTheTrees #FionaBarnett #NEtGalley #NetGalleyreads

I got lost in the woods

First, thank you to NetGalley and Rebellion for an advanced reader's copy of this book!

The atmosphere in this book is incredible. I had chills running through my body pretty much the whole time as if I was the one there getting lost among the trees. It honestly made me a little unsettled. It is important to note that I am still testing out the horror genre. It was a little too much for me. However, I know quite a few avid horror readers who I will be recommending the book to. I think they will really enjoy it.

Beyond the weak nervous system, I really enjoyed the main character. Almost to the point where I wish I could have gotten more from her. I do like alternate perspectives, though, and the concept of getting the events from the views of the two parties across time was interesting. The ending wasn't my favorite. There were a lot of unanswered questions for me. I do think that was the point and I think it would be appreciated by someone who prefers this style of writing.

My thanks for NetGalley for this ARC — I wanted so much to love this based off the premise but the prose really dragged on and it gave no meat to the horror/thriller aspects that I kept looking for. This book was described as atmospheric but with the forest as a main character in its own right, the build up of that atmosphere was severely lacking.

A group of academics arrive at a fenced-off forest, unexplored for decades due to strange happenings: some kind of magnetic field is disrupting compasses, for a start. They’re there – oh so prepared, they think – to try to find evidence of a 17th century group of soldiers that disappeared after a civil war skirmish. Seventeen men entered the woods, but only two came out – with disquieting, fever-dream stories.

Alternating chapters tell their story, while the present day thread follows the women and their personal conflicts as their own expedition also takes a strange and deadly turn…

I suppose I need to come clean, that I actually know the author – we were in the same NaNoWriMo group! So slightly torn between needing this book to be awful, and hoping that I didn’t have to swerve talking to Fiona in the future :)

Alas – and hurrah! – the book is not awful. It’s pretty bloddy great, in fact (and no no, that’s not me turning greenish ;)). It’s a slow burn of parallel stories, getting creepier and darker, and revealing all sorts of psychological ticks to the characters. Soldiers battling with the idea of how they’ve lived their lives; an academic so obsessed with finding the truth to this centuries-long mystery and decades-long professional slights; a post-doc student struggling with common sense versus authority. It’s such a great twist on horror stories, where you’re often left screaming “Why would you do that?!” – well, here are some reasons.

I’m a giant wuss when it comes to horror, so I stuck to reading this in the daytime. It didn’t give me nightmares, though – it’s creepy and unsettling but not too much for a weakling like me.

My single complaint – which I’ve seen in other reviews – is that this isn’t the kind of book that hands you all the answers at the end. I get it, and it does work, but there is always that itch to know all the gritty details. But it’s a minor itch, still more than plenty to totally engross you in the story, following both groups into … well, you’ll just have to read it ;)

At times an effectively creepy, but overall a touch repetitive, folk horror. Telling two stories in parallel - in one a group of civil war soldiers and in the other a group of women on a university field visit- there is an intriguing build up of threat and incident, and the interlocked stories do combine to reveal both the cause and lay the ground for what’s to come next. However, at times the modern section was rather exposition heavy - “do tell us more of your research” - which felt unrealistic in the context of what was happening.

Enjoyable but flawed

I got about halfway though this book and it was boring and nothing was happening. Especially from the women's perspective. I thought it was going to be more of a horror book but instead it wasn't really anything.

I think the taglines for this book, calling it a mix of The Descent and The Ritual were actually along the right lines this time. I also felt some similarities, mainly to do with the forest itself, to Naomi Novik's Uprooted.

This book was at the same time both quite disorienting, but I felt it also kept a good steady pace throughout. The alternating chapters helped this, in my opinion.
I found it curious that even though there were two groups of characters with varying POVs, the wood still somehow stuck out as the main character to me.

I loved the sense of atmosphere and think you could read the respect the author has for the woods and forests (and their mysterious secrets) unwritten between her words.

Some of my favourite stories talk about old myths, and this book had that in spades. As the book tells us, the mystery here is older than the trees and mountains, and the devil himself.

One of my favourite aspects of this story was how it played with time, which you see towards the end of the book. I really appreciated that a lot of the answers were slightly out of focus like they still couldn't be pinned down, how neither the characters nor the reader sees whatever is stalking and attacking them on their journey. I think this also instilled a lot of dread and anticipation. But I know this choice of style in storytelling may not be for everyone.
Adding to that I'm not sure the ending will be, either. For those who like things neatly summarised with a bow, this may not be up your street. But I think this is worth a read for anyone who loves to spend time in the forest, imagining that there will still always be parts of it hidden to you.

A slow-burn horror lite, The Dark Between The Trees never fulfilled its promise. While it had a solid start, the telling seemed to plateau early without much pretense. The author manages a mysterious atmosphere, so the lack appears to be with the characters. I never felt connected with any of the female explorers. The characters of the past felt much more substantial than in the present day. I wanted much more of the Corrigan.

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review*

Great horror book - creepy and unsettling! Perfect for late night reading!

The people who live near Moresby Forest know to stay clear of it; or if you have to enter it, at least make sure you leave before dark. Its mythos is antediluvian: ancient, murky, biblical. Moresby Forrest: one of the most interesting—and flushed out characters—in the book.

The forest is designated as a “marshy microclimate”; the national park service labeling it “actively dangerous”. There are no man-made paths; compasses/GPS’ do not work; a giant oak tree appears and disappears; and the surroundings appear to change at a drop-of-a-hat. As one character puts it, “What (we were walking through) was not all there was to walk through, and what they were seeing was not all there was to see.”

There is a surreal sense of time, place, and identity throughout the novel. The basic plot is about a group of present-day women who enter the forest to find evidence of a 17th century army company that entered the forest and disappeared. A deserter was the sole witness to the party entering the woods; his story is what impels Dr. Alice Christopher to put together an expedition and—against all advice--enter Moseby Forest.

Through the eyes and thoughts of a couple of men, we learn about what happened in Moresby Forrest after the army deserter left. It is 1643 and Captain Alexander Davis’ battalion has been ambushed by an unseen enemy. Only 17 of the original party make it into the forest; several of whom are injured. Chapters switch between the two groups (the present-day women, and the men in the past) as they experience parallel situations.

This was an enjoyable read. The paranormal juxtaposed over the actual physical and mental hardships of the people involved made for an exciting read.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Solaris Publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was so good! I'm a sucker for a proper horror story and this is fantastic- just the right amount of dread, folk horror, and unknowable, uncaring forces of the universe, joined with some truly great characters on both the modern-day research team and the company of Civil War soldiers trapped in the woods.

I was especially pleased that Barnett didn't feel the need to explain everything- I think a lot of stories fall down at this part and I'm glad that the book left a lot up to the reader's interpretation. It's scarier that way, the old adage of 'never show the monster' proving true yet again.

If you like your horror slow burn, smart and historical- pick this up immediately. You won't regret it.

This book is written with a great creepy tone that really adds to the story. I have not read this author before and look forward to reading more.

I decided to read this after spotting it on NetGalley the cover and blurb drew me in.
Initially it took me a few chapters to get my head around the fact that they spring from present to past.
A great story Dr Alice Christopher is a professor with an obsession with Moresby forest a place where people have disappeared her main focus is a party of soldiers who entered and only 2 men came out.
The chapters with the soldiers themselves were great the way you take yourself back to where might makes right and the fear of the unknown.
The forest it appears has two levels which Dr Alice and her group find on the first night upon being given permission to enter. This forest is fenced in and kicked off too many stories of darkness and fear means special permission is to be granted. Entering with a young pre graduate Nuria and 3 guides to assist they find themselves lost within the forest. No digital devices work here batteries drain almost immediately it’s eerie and engrossing.
There is a feared spectre here who haunts the woods named after a family whom wanted to live within the woods and then all but disappeared within.
A thoroughly engaging read I don’t want to plot spoil but a great read.

Sometimes I read a synopsis that immediately attracts me to a novel. Fiona Barnett’s brilliant debut novel, The Dark Between the Trees is one such example. The story takes place in Moresby Wood, England, and flits between two points in time. In 1643, we join a group of ambushed soldiers, who flee into the wood for cover. However, two of their number are aware of the terrifying reputation of the wood, and the monstrous Corrigal that dwells within. They urge their comrades to venture no deeper, but the soldiers obviously ignore the warnings, and their numbers quickly dwindle.

Then we leap to the present day, where a group of women, led by academic Dr. Alice Christopher, enter the forbidden woods to investigate the past weirdness. For Dr. Christopher, this is the realization of a life-long dream, previously denied due to sexism and general academic prejudice. Dragging four unsuspecting women behind her, their experiences begin to mirror those of the 1643 soldiers.

The Dark Between the Trees ticked so many boxes for me. Potentially spooky woods, yes; Blair Witch-style impossible loss of sense of direction, yes; modern technology quickly failing, big yes! Early on in the novel, one of the current-day characters affirms that there is no possible way they could get lost, with their handy GPS and spare batteries. Oh, you poor fool.

The chapters alternate between timelines, and complement each other beautifully, and show the timeless nature of fear. There were parts of this book where I was genuinely scared, and half turned my head away from the page so I could quickly look away if things got too hairy. Barnett does a fantastic job of building tension quickly, and manages to keep it going throughout.

I loved this book. It’s scary, it’s fun, it’s interesting, and the characters are fantastic. I think monsters that may, or may not be, living in the woods, is my new favorite genre (see also Christina Henry’s Near the Bone, and Laird Barron’s horrifying short story, Tiptoe).