Cally’s sister disappeared over 10 years ago, while on a visit to a friend’s house. Both of their bodies were never found…

Cally is now a junior in high school, and has decided to transfer to St. Bede’s. Her sister had disappeared in the woods adjoining the school, and Cally feels if she’s near the area she can figure out what happened that fateful night.

Read rest of review at: http://shouldireaditornot.wordpress.com/2012/07/25/the-little-woods-mccormick-te... ( )

I'm just gonna come right out and say it: I didn't like this book. There were too many characters, an easy mystery, a weird romance, and boring main character. None of it made any sense to me whatsoever. There was only one character that I liked (loved) but that's hardly a redemptive quality to fix an entire book.


First and foremost, the writing was ridonkulous. The narration was done by your typical seventeen year old girl, but then every once in a while there was a crazy, out of place SAT word that did NOT in any way fit into the style. Examples

crepuscular; loggia; bacchanals; strigine; bellicose; drosophila; ersatz; variegated; hirsute; puerility; sybaritic; autodidact; hypoxic

These were just in the first 50 pages or so. Some of them I had to look up, others not, but all of them did not fit in with a YA mystery with a 17 year old average narrator. No sir.



Now, the characters. Cally is our MC, a girl who lost her sister, a sister who supposedly died in a fire in the Little Woods outside the school Cally enrolls herself in. There is really no mention of why Cally would want to go to school where her sister died, and there's not enough motivation behind Cally's actions. Moving Cally to this school only served to create the plot. Without this ridiculous, motivationless, thoughtless decision, there would be no book. Whatever.



Once Cally does move into this school (whose name eludes me) she meets a gang of girls. There's about 5-7 of these girls and they are all exactly the same. I mean, they are described as looking different, but all their voices are the same, and I can't tell one from the next. This happens a lot when books have a huge cast of characters like this.



Cally gets a boyfriend. I don't really understand what he sees in her. He's gorgeous, obvi, and the most popular, sought-after, best athlete guy in the whole school. He never settles down until he meets Cally. Who admittedly isn't good-looking, wears boys' clothes, and is weird. But beyond this craziness, Cally also snags the second most sought-after perpetually-single boy (who her new best friend is crushing on) and cheats on her boyfriend with this new boy. So not only did she do the impossible, she did it twice, and cheated on the first one with a boy her best friend is head over heels for. Squicky sexy-time ensues, and of course, a cat fight.



Finally, after all this craziness, we find out what the mystery is. There is a missing girl and we're trying to figure out who killed her. Turns out the killer of missing girl also killed Cally sister years ago. But very early on I figured out who the killer was. It wasn't a mystery by any means. And finally, by the time it was all revealed, the entire thing was way too convoluted and wrapped up on itself that motivations were lost and the entire thing seemed pointless. I don't know.



In all, the only thing I liked about this book was a character named Chelsea, who is so demented that she lied about sleeping with someone's dad. But also turns out to be a good guy. She was interesting, and if Chelsea, the art star, had been the main character, this book could have been way more interesting.


In all, I don't think I could comfortably recommend this book. The writing was silly, the sexy-time was squicky, the characters were cardboard cut-outs of Bella Swan at FYE, and the mystery was easily solved. ( )

The Little Woods by McCormick Templeman
Pages: 336
Release Date: July 10th, 2012
DNF date: 2012, June 26th
Received: ARC via NetGalley

Reasons for DNF -

1. The main reason was the stupid amount of content for a story like this. It seemed to be more about smoking pot, getting boyfriends to sleep with, and a really confused MC who really has no moral compass.

2. The double boyfriend thing. OH MY GOSH, could this girl be more retarded?! She just randomly decides she's going to have makeout sessions with both boys, and...yeah. it was so lame. I could hardly stand it. My disappointment level was at like 1388572384639287 because I really liked the MC at the beginning!

3. By the time I realized how stupid the content level was, I'd lost interest in the mystery. I didn't even skip tot he end to see what happens. There was nothing to string me along anymore.

Now, there is a reason why I didn't hate this book: I was really strung along at first. I was scared, because OMG there are some freaky scenes, and totally intrigued. And the writing was beautiful. For those reasons, I don't NOT recommend this to people.... In fact, I feel like being generous today and saying, I actually recommend this to people who love mysteries and are above the age of 16. It just wasn't for me.

Read my other reviews! ( )

I'm just gonna come right out and say it: I didn't like this book. There were too many characters, an easy mystery, a weird romance, and boring main character. None of it made any sense to me whatsoever. There was only one character that I liked (loved) but that's hardly a redemptive quality to fix an entire book.


First and foremost, the writing was ridonkulous. The narration was done by your typical seventeen year old girl, but then every once in a while there was a crazy, out of place SAT word that did NOT in any way fit into the style. Examples

crepuscular; loggia; bacchanals; strigine; bellicose; drosophila; ersatz; variegated; hirsute; puerility; sybaritic; autodidact; hypoxic

These were just in the first 50 pages or so. Some of them I had to look up, others not, but all of them did not fit in with a YA mystery with a 17 year old average narrator. No sir.



Now, the characters. Cally is our MC, a girl who lost her sister, a sister who supposedly died in a fire in the Little Woods outside the school Cally enrolls herself in. There is really no mention of why Cally would want to go to school where her sister died, and there's not enough motivation behind Cally's actions. Moving Cally to this school only served to create the plot. Without this ridiculous, motivationless, thoughtless decision, there would be no book. Whatever.



Once Cally does move into this school (whose name eludes me) she meets a gang of girls. There's about 5-7 of these girls and they are all exactly the same. I mean, they are described as looking different, but all their voices are the same, and I can't tell one from the next. This happens a lot when books have a huge cast of characters like this.



Cally gets a boyfriend. I don't really understand what he sees in her. He's gorgeous, obvi, and the most popular, sought-after, best athlete guy in the whole school. He never settles down until he meets Cally. Who admittedly isn't good-looking, wears boys' clothes, and is weird. But beyond this craziness, Cally also snags the second most sought-after perpetually-single boy (who her new best friend is crushing on) and cheats on her boyfriend with this new boy. So not only did she do the impossible, she did it twice, and cheated on the first one with a boy her best friend is head over heels for. Squicky sexy-time ensues, and of course, a cat fight.



Finally, after all this craziness, we find out what the mystery is. There is a missing girl and we're trying to figure out who killed her. Turns out the killer of missing girl also killed Cally sister years ago. But very early on I figured out who the killer was. It wasn't a mystery by any means. And finally, by the time it was all revealed, the entire thing was way too convoluted and wrapped up on itself that motivations were lost and the entire thing seemed pointless. I don't know.



In all, the only thing I liked about this book was a character named Chelsea, who is so demented that she lied about sleeping with someone's dad. But also turns out to be a good guy. She was interesting, and if Chelsea, the art star, had been the main character, this book could have been way more interesting.


In all, I don't think I could comfortably recommend this book. The writing was silly, the sexy-time was squicky, the characters were cardboard cut-outs of Bella Swan at FYE, and the mystery was easily solved. ( )

I don’t often read thrillers or horror stories but once in a while I totally get an itch to read something scary. The Little Woods sounded like it would fit the bill. It turned out to be a quick easy read but unfortunately didn’t really satisfy my need for thriller and mystery.

I think maybe I have watched too many episodes of CSI and Law & Order in my lifetime because this is not the first novel I have read where I figured out “who did it” long before the end. Very early on it was easy to determine the identity of the murderer of Calista’s sister and half way through the book it was obvious why the same murderer killed again. The only thing I was waiting for was the motive behind the initial murders. But since I figured it out so early, the wait for the actual reveal made me lose interest.

I wasn’t a big fan of most of the characters in this book. You just don’t learn enough about them to develop a relationship with them. Sadly, I was also not a fan of the main character, Calista. Her character seemed rather contradictory. She sometimes comes off as an independent rule breaker that turns her nose up at the popular crowd. This quality is the reason why I never quite understood her decision to build and maintain relationships with the popular girls at the expense of other friends that shared similar interests as her. It just didn’t ring true. Also, Cali admits to being a pretentious word snob. She uses a number of unusual words in her internal dialogue. Although educational, this quality of hers seemed forced. I think maybe it would have seemed less forced if she had been using those words in dialogue with other characters.

The characters I did enjoy were Jack, Sophie and Chelsea. Jack was just all boy. Fairly down to earth and “normal” and a little bit clueless. Sophie was smart and my favorite moment in the book was her response to Cali when she shaved her head. Then there was Chelsea. She was truly the most mysterious part of this book. Every scene with her involves great dialogue and/or creepy actions. In the end, you still don’t know much about her. She is the one person that provided true mystery to the story.

This was just a meh for me. I haven’t read many YA mysteries but out of those few I have read I would recommend Breaking Beautiful by Jennifer Shaw Wolf or Every You, Every Me by David Levithan.

Nat ( )