The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

  

The God of the Woods is a novel that pulls you into a community and lets you live there for a good length of time. In this case, it is the young campers and counselors at a summer camp in upstate New York, along with the members of the family who own the camp and the police called in to look for a missing person.

The event at the heart of this story is the disappearance of a camper, the daughter of the camp's owner. She is also the sister of a boy who disappeared in a similar fashion years earlier. Police are brought in to look for the missing girl and everyone in the community begins to rethink the earlier tragedy.

Points of view and time frames switch around from chapter to chapter as the mystery unfurls, allowing readers to get to know all the characters simultaneously, even when they are from different generations.

I listened to the audio which I would recommend for anyone looking for a good listen on a long ride.

Becoming Catherine by Jane C R Reid

 

The plot of Becoming Catherine combines time travel with hints of reincarnation and karma to make a story I looked forward to reading every time I picked up the book. It's about a young woman named Kate who contracts the flu and falls into a deep sleep. When she wakes, she's back in time, in the body of Catherine, the sister of Kate's ancestor Byron.

Byron and Catherine are the children of Bertrand Lloyd, a famous nineteenth-century opera singer whose career plummeted when he lost his voice. This “new” Catherine has to adjust to a different era with old-fashioned societal norms while dealing with Bertrand, who has a dark side, and with the fact that she doesn't know the “old” Catherine's history.

Jane C R Reid's writing and characters are excellent. I recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys paranormal stories centered on a dysfunctional family.