The Cabin in the Woods - Sarah Alderson

Author: Sarah Alderson

Narrator: Stephanie Cannon

Genre: Domestic Drama

Rating: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: Loved a lot of things about this book. But also disliked quite a few. Plus, it is more of a domestic drama than a psychological thriller. Go in blind.

Story Synopsis: (I meant what I said above. Go in blind. So here’s the most boring and blandest synopsis possible.)

Rose Reed has recently begun living in a cabin in the woods. She is afraid of something. She is also waiting for something. Who, what, why? You will need to read and find out.

The story tells us about her present and her past through her first person perspective.

✔ Now some of you smart readers might go to the book page on Goodreads to check out the blurb. That blurb is outstanding – whoever wrote it knew how to get the pulse of the readers going.

❌ That blurb doesn’t match the story at all. It appears to promise a psychological thriller but the book is more like a domestic drama with a couple of thrilling scenes.

✔ The story is told in two broad timelines – past and present. While the present moves chronologically, the past comes in flashbacks at different points in time and not in linear order. I liked the challenge this presented in terms of concentration. It was a welcome change from the usual dual-timeline patterns that just affix themselves to a point in the past/present and work sequentially from there. For a change, both timelines work at equally interesting levels.

✔ There are two kinds of unreliable narrators: those who deliberately mislead under the cover of drugs/alcohol/amnesia, and those who simply don’t reveal the whole truth. The second works much better for readers as they discover truths when they are unveiled, without making them feel like they were being fooled earlier. Rose is in the second category. She doesn’t lie, she just doesn’t tell you the whole truth. It is like a game, trying to figure out if she’s misleading you.

✔ The writing provides plenty of twists and surprises. Sometimes you can sense a twist coming up in thrillers. Not in this one. Most twists came out of the blue and caught me by surprise.

❌ Some of these twists are way too farfetched to be convincing. Suspension of disbelief required.

✔ The book started off wonderfully. The suspense is built up slowly but steadily, and it is soon clear that the story is going into some unforeseen directions. There is some foreshadowing but even that doesn’t spoil the surprises.

❌ The midway mark--where there are some big reveals--goes into totally predictable domestic thriller territory. The final section gets the action into surprise mode again, but the ending and the epilogue were big disappointments to me. They were over even before I realised it and were quite predictable.

✔ There are some novel elements in the plot. It is like a rags-to-riches story that has turned into a nightmare. Rose’s background is somewhat unusual for this genre, as is her modus operandi.

❌ While what happened isn’t guessable directly, who was the reason behind it is ultra-predictable because almost every domestic thriller casts the same character as the guilty party. This trope has become too common and has killed all the fun of guessing in this genre.

✔ The present that partly occurs in the ‘cabin in the woods’ setting uses the location well. The remoteness, the lack of facilities, and the atmosphere are replicated well.

❌ The title makes the book sound very creepy. But there’s nothing eerie or spooky about the story. It isn’t even mainly about the cabin, thus making it an inaccurate title. Most of it isn’t set in that location.

All in all, it was a good drama, but it didn’t give me as many thrills and chills as I had expected. I enjoyed the story to a fair extent but could have done without some overused tropes. No regrets reading it, but a better-written ending would have made me rate it higher. This is my first book by this author, and I might still try more of her works, so that’s a plus.

The audiobook, clocking at about 8 hrs, is narrated by Stephanie Cannon. She narrates wonderfully and enunciates well. As an avid audiobook listener, I had no problem concentrating on the shifting timelines, but audio newbies might find it difficult to keep track of this.

My thanks to HarperCollins UK Audio and NetGalley for the ALC of “The Cabin in the Woods”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.