Book Review: "Stranger in the Woods" by Anni Taylor

It was just a bit of thinking I was doing recently where I found out that reading a thriller set in a remote location with folklorish vibes would be able to make me feel a bit happier in my soul. Stranger in the Woods by Anni Taylor is such a clever and brilliant book and though I have to admit that I guessed who was responsible long before it was revealed at the end, the way the author seemed to drop weird and unusual hints through language and action was such an incredible talent. It wasn't lost on me that the whole point of this book wasn't just what the author was saying, it was what they were not saying...

Isla is in her mid-twenties and she has a photography business in Australia, or something of the sort. She suffers from epilepsy and has a weird relationship with her mother in that her mother treats her as though she is a small child (such as buying clothes for her etc). Out of nowhere, she seems to get a gig to work in a remote area of Scotland to take some photographs of an artsy couple who live out of the way. She looks up the name of the family and comes across an article relating to their eight-year-old daughter who, if alive in the timeline of Isla, would be ten years' old. She had died in a strange way. Someone had lured little Elodie out to a playhouse and drugged her. Leaving her asleep and doing nothing with her, the person left her there and ultimately Elodie died without waking up some days later in the hospital. The author does this wonderful thing where she flashes back on the life of Elodie but only in these few days. We see her chased into the playhouse and then she falls asleep. The interspersed chapters that watch over Elodie narrate her as being able to hear everything around her, but she is not able to respond. She is slowly dying and the reader is entirely aware of it. It is such a sad set of chapters.

Isla, becoming more and more uneasy with the family she is staying with in Scotland, wills herself to find out what happened to Elodie. Suspicion first falls on the father who is seen as a bit stern, aloof and people are definitely afraid of him. Suspicion also falls on Elodie's teacher who, one day, drops off some of Elodie's paintings from school display boards to the home whilst nobody is there - then lingers outside the house for more than an hour in the woods. As we go through a large cast of characters, we are reminded of a line that is uttered early on in the text: the locals do not want the killer to be anyone local (as they will know and be related to people) and they don't want it to be anyone ordinary (as that is too frightening). We are also reminded of the fact that many of the 'tight knit' people of this little community are not ordinary at all though they all know each other's business, and strangely enough - a lot of them don't spend much time in the town anymore. Can they still be considered local, or is the avoidance for another reason entirely?

Mixed with this is the fact that Isla seems to be stalked by a boyfriend she cannot remember, she wakes up one day injured, finds a photograph of five young men with matching tatoos and even witnesses someone following her as she lurks around looking for the playhouse. I'm not going to lie to you, there were moments in this book that felt absolutely terrifying but I am sure that was definitely the author's intention. But as a young girl called Stella will remind our main character, Isla constantly that she knows more than meets the eye about Elodie's case - we can start to see and narrow down who could possibly be implicated in her death. The question is not just about who murdered Elodie, it is about why they were doing what they did at all. There are easier and more definitive ways to kill someone than use sleeping pills and, it didn't seem like he wanted her dead - it seems as though she died by accident.

An atmospheric, slow-burning, multi-layered and deceptive narrative, it will keep you being led in all kinds of directions. You will only see the answer if you look particularly closely at the finer details.