The God of the Woods – Liz Moore

When tragedy strikes once, it binds a family together. When it happens twice, you can’t help but wonder, what lies beneath the surface?

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore is the haunting story of a family marked by not one, but two disappearances. Fifteen years after the loss of their eight-year-old son, the Van Laars are plunged back into darkness when their thirteen-year-old daughter vanishes.

Set in the breathtaking Adirondack Mountains, the setting is almost a character in itself, untamed, beautiful, and full of hidden shadows. Moore paints the scene so vividly that you can almost smell the pine trees. It’s an atmosphere that’s both magnificent and unnervingly tense. The wild, sprawling campgrounds are the perfect stage for a story about privilege, grief, and secrets that refuse to stay buried. The Van Laars, an affluent family of bankers, seem to have it all, yet beneath the polished surface lies a web of guilt, silence, and generational pain.

This isn’t simply a missing child story. It’s an intricate, decades-spanning saga of family, class, and the echoes of tragedy that ripple across generations. Moore’s prose is exquisite, lyrical yet precise, and she manages the shifting viewpoints with remarkable skill. In lesser hands, the constant changes in perspective could feel confusing, but here they create a rich tapestry of voices and motives that build layer upon layer until you realise you’re reading about far more than just one mystery; it’s about loss, guilt, privilege, and how the past has a nasty habit of bleeding into the present. Each chapter ends with the kind of cliffhanger that leaves you torn between lingering on one storyline and racing ahead to the next.

That said, there are moments when the pacing falters under the weight of description, but the balance quickly restores itself. The narrative rewards patience with depth, offering far more than a straightforward mystery.

The God of the Woods explores grief and loss, yes, but it also delves into the damage done by societal expectations and the devastating power of public opinion. It traces the evolution of women’s rights from the 1950s onwards, highlighting both progress and the stubborn remnants of outdated thinking. At its heart are questions of morality: What would you do to protect yourself? And what would you sacrifice for your child? These themes reverberate through different generations and different families, making it an ideal choice for book clubs or readers fascinated by intergenerational trauma and social psychology.

Though Barbara Van Laar’s disappearance drives the plot, much of the emotional weight still centres around her brother Bear’s earlier tragedy, offering, in a sense, two intertwined mysteries. Moore’s foreshadowing is clever and subtle; just when you think you’ve solved the puzzle, she turns the story on its head. By the final fifth of the book, you’ll find yourself unable to stop reading – so consider yourself warned before starting that section late at night.

This novel leaves its mark. It’s not easily set aside once finished. You’ll find yourself thinking about its characters, their flaws, their choices and their pain long after the final page. You’ll want to comfort some and shake sense into others. God of the Woods is an emotionally charged, deeply human story that begins quietly but soon takes hold, pulling you into its depths and refusing to let go until the very end.

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