House in the Woods by Jessica Aiken-Hall – Review by Roxsanne Lesieur.

House in the Woods by Jessica Aiken-Hall
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Molly Jackson is a young woman who has just finished her second year of college and is enjoying taking a break over summer, but she cannot enjoy herself too much because she has to look after her mum who has been diagnosed with Dementia and often forgets things and sometimes gets lost, but her dad has no patience with her and so it is often left to Molly to deal with everything while he just gets angry and complains, it leads to her feeling that she doesn’t belong in the family, that she is too different and it saddens her sometimes. As she is managing the pressure of daily life, her mum disappears from the house again, so she reaches out to her older brother to come down and help her look since her mum has been gone much longer than normal. While Molly is out searching for her mum, she passes the school and watches the preparations for this years graduation ceremony, but she spots a flyer on the notice board which she hasn’t seen before, it is about a search for a missing person, but she is shocked to find that they have been missing for twenty years and that the person in the picture looks startlingly like her.

After a few hours,Molly’s dad calls her and tells her that he has found her mum safe and sound and that she needs to get home as soon as she can, when she does, she immediately hugs her mum and tells her how worried she was before taking her into the garden with a cup of tea to sit by her favourite flowers, she takes the chance of her dad not being around to ask where her mum was, but she is evasive and doesn’t answer directly, apart from saying something about a “house in the woods”, any further conversation is cut off by her dad demanding lunch, which partially goes to plan until her mum forgets what she is doing and almost burns it. Later that evening, her brother turns up after driving most of the day to get there, but Molly realises that she forgot to tell him their mum was home, so he comes in to see her. She is happy to see him, but unfortunately, their dad isn’t so happy.

With her brothers arrival, Molly realises that she doesn’t really know that much about him and that since he moved away before she was born, she hasn’t had the chance because of the years which pass between his scarce visits, but now he is back in their hometown, she is going to use the opportunity to do just that and get to know him a bit more, but instead of staying with them, he decides to stay at the local motel as he cannot get on with their dad at all. She gets ready and goes to meet her brother, when she arrives he is on the phone and looking a bit upset, it turns out that he had been in contact with one of his friends about their twenty year reunion, seeing if he wants to go and whether he wants to meet up with them beforehand, this is where Molly asks if it has anything to do with the flyer she saw, this shocks her brother when he realoses who she is talking about and they decide to go and join in the search together after he tells her about the girl and their past. It turns out that they were college sweethearts but that she disappeared from a party and wasn’t seen again and her brother still tortures himself about it all this time later.

When they head to the search and find out where they will be starting and who will be there, things start to get a bit unnerving for Molly, this feeling only deepens as she becomes more involved and hears more about the girl and what happened, this combined with her mum disappearing again leaves Molly struggling to make sense of everything. Will she be able to help solve the mysteries of both the missing girl and where her mum keeps disappearing to, or will the things she finds out on the way cause her to worry more than before? This is a thrilling search for answers with plenty of twists, turns and secrets to keep you guessing the conclusion all the way to the end.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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