We Went to the Woods

by Caite Dolan-Leach

They went off the grid. Their secrets didn't. For readers of The Secret History and The Immortalists comes a novel about the allure--and dangers--of disconnecting.

Certain that society is on the verge of economic and environmental collapse, five disillusioned twenty-somethings make a bold decision: They gather in upstate New York to transform an abandoned farm, once the site of a turn-of-the-century socialist commune, into an idyllic self-sustaining compound called the Homestead.

Louisa spearheads the project, as her wealthy family owns the plot of land. Beau is the second to commit; as mysterious and sexy as he is charismatic, he torments Louisa with his nightly disappearances and his other relationships. Chloe, a dreamy musician, is naturally able to attract anyone to her--which inevitably results in conflict. Jack, the most sensible and cerebral of the group, is the only one with any practical farm experience. Mack, the last to join, believes it's her calling to write their story--but she is not the most objective narrator, and inevitably complicates their increasingly tangled narrative. Initially exhilarated by restoring the rustic dwellings, planting a garden, and learning the secrets of fermentation, the group is soon divided by slights, intense romantic and sexual relationships, jealousies, and suspicions. And as winter settles in, their experiment begins to feel not only misguided, but deeply isolating and dangerous.

Caite Dolan-Leach spins a poignant and deeply human tale with sharp insights into our modern anxieties, our collective failures, and the timeless desire to withdraw from the world.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Thriller, Literary Fiction, Nature, Adult, Mystery

353 pages, Hardcover

First published July 2, 2019

About the author

Caite Dolan-Leach is a writer and literary translator. She was born in the Finger Lakes region and is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and the American University in Paris.

Reviews

[Meredith (Trying to catch up!) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Five pretentious millennials move off the grid to start a commune in upstate New York. Over the course of a year, not much happens. It’s a long and slow year. In the end, their idealism leads them to tragedy.

Mack, a 20 something former PhD candidate, has moved back home to live with her parents and hide out from the fallout from her humiliating appearance on a reality TV show. In response to what she did on the show, she is relentlessly trolled on social media. After she meets Louisa, Jack, Chloe, and Beau at a party, she is quick to attach herself to their group. When they suggest moving to an abandoned farm and starting a cooperative, she is more than willing to move with them as living off the grid offers her another layer of hiding from the masses.

Since the five members of The Homestead don’t want to definitively define the mission of farm or define relationships with one another, things become murky. They believe corporations are destroying the world and want to fight back. But their real enemies are much closer than they realize, creating a subtle level of tension that grows throughout the novel. Their relationships with one another add another layer of tension. They frequently swap sexual partners and rarely talk about their feelings. Or so it seems to Mack, as the reader is experiencing The Homestead purely through her eyes.

Mack makes for an interesting narrator. Even though she prides herself on being an academic who studies anthropology (people and societies), she is not very good at observing what is going on right in front of her face. Too concerned with her own shame, she is not ready to fully reveal herself and idealizes The Homestead and her new companions. I wish I had the opportunity to know more about Beau, Lisa, Jack, and Chloe, as Mack’s renditions are sometimes scattered and not fully realized. I felt like I only had glimpses of their characters vs. a full picture.

While I didn’t love We Went to the Woods, I did enjoy the historical elements that focus on 19th-century Utopian societies. At the same time, the characters are spoiled brats and I found myself wanting to slap them repeatedly. The final sentences left me feeling unsatisfied.

This book isn’t going to be for everyone. It is a character study and a commentary on a social experiment that moves slowly with little action. A lot of the narrative is a detailed retelling of important events, which don’t seem all that significant to the reader--the day they got the goat, the day the dog showed up, the day they harvested raspberries, etc. However, Mack’s voice and questionable point-of-view pulled me into the world of The Homestead. Overall, We Went to the Woods offers an interesting examination on Utopian societies and communes.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 21st century take on the communes of the ‘60’s; five millennials undertake a “get back to the land” experiment in sustainable living. The characters are the usual band of friends: the strident one, the thoughtful one, the sensitive one, the radical one, and the one running away from something. We know from the beginning that it all goes south so the novel chronicles its eventual demise as well as the alliances, hidden agendas, sexual activities and secrets among the members of The Homestead. The characters are wonderfully drawn and along the way you learn a bit about the history of utopian communities of the past. Given the title be prepared for musings from the Transcendentalists notably Thoreau.

[Chelsea Humphrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it's safe to say that after book #2 by this author, I'm just not the right reader for her stories. I'm going to simply encourage readers to check out the 4-5 star reviews to help determine whether or not this book is for them.

*Many thanks to the publisher for providing my review copy via NetGalley.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

We Went to the Woods is a book that is probably a case of I’m simply the wrong reader and maybe others will love this one. I say that because this one ended up being absolutely nothing like what I had imagined it to be which was perhaps horror or some kind of dramatic thriller. Instead it’s basically a contemporary version of a hippie commune.

Mackenzie (Mack) is the lead character of this story, a twenty something who has had some bad experience in her life leaving her jobless and wondering what to do with her life. Mack’s mistake keeps following her as she gets recognized everywhere so when she meets four others, Louisa, Chloe, Beau and Jack, who are looking to go off grid she decides to join them.

My problem with this is there is basically nothing going on in the whole book other than the five disillusioned, spoiled millennials that move onto an old farm they call The Homestead. They plant crops, get a few animals, trade with other locals and have some interaction with another commune. Yay! There’s complaining about corporate America, the presidential election, chemicals etc etc. as they “live off the land” with only occasionally running back home to mommy and daddy. So for me I feel I’m being nice with giving it 1 1/2 stars since it was such a slow, dull read to me.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

For more reviews please visit https://carriesbookreviews.com/

[Mel (Epic Reading) · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's an ominous feel to We Went to the Woods at the beginning. Our narrator (lead gal) is telling us the story after it's happened and so we know that whatever the scenario was it didn't go exactly well for her; although she did survive. The first few chapters give us a basic set-up of our lead gal and her current circumstances; as well as introduce us to the other four people who make up the core of the characters that live on the 'homestead' with our lead gal eventually. And of course we get the rhetoric about sustainability and climate change. Let's talk about that first:

Moral Message
You can't go into a book like Caite Dolan-Leach has written and not expect to be lectured about how the Earth is dying and we are the cause. There is a very, very strong message here that our current way of life in first world countries is going to end badly (as we all know already) and that we should look to alternatives to resolve the issue. In the case of We Went to the Woods the 'solution' is to live on a homestead where they only eat locally sourced items or ones they grew themselves. There is talk of the planning that is involved in preparing for winter and other logistical items that would come up. I liked that the specifics of the homestead were addressed and that the novel is set in a place where there is a true winter.

Overall Plot
I'd like to say there is more plot here than there is. There is an attempt at plot that includes a weird nearby cult-like group, some environmental protests, sexual relations amoungst our homestead characters and other random things; but at no time is there ever anything driving the story forward except that existence is perceived as linear. So time just moves forward. It's not enough for me and felt more like I was reading a very boring diary than a story that I was invested in.

Boring
The reality is that We Went to the Woods is just boring after about 100 pages. No one really cares enough to read about cutting wood, growing vegetables, or other basic rustic living tasks. And while random things happen like a bear trap is found, some relations between characters, a storm or two; nothing really 'happens' in a way that feels like it matters. The sub-plot of the local 'cult' that lives nearby was not enough for me, and was so cliche that I felt like it was stolen right from a hundred books before it. I just never felt like there was anything interesting enough to really latch onto. So I forced myself to finish this one because it was needed for a challenge. Sad but true.

Overall
The best part of We Went to the Woods is that Dolan-Leach has clearly lived in a cold place or researched it really well. The snowy, cold winter months are handled superbly. As a Canadian this is a big pet peeve of mine with survival based books and it was nice for things like frostbite to be handled appropriately. Otherwise I struggle to come up with anything that I felt was worthwhile in this story. The way cults lure in members is not new, the idea of survival on local aspects only is not new, and the weird relationships people cultivate in small quarters is just not enough either. Especially knowing that at any time these characters can drive out to town and be a part of 'regular society' again takes away most danger that presents itself.
There might be a story to be told here but it would need to be re-worked and handled in a different way to really be worthy of telling.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like most books compared to The Secret History, We Went to the Woods isn't as good, so let's just get that out of the way. Which I'm not saying to be spiteful, I just genuinely don't want to see this book flop because of unrealistically high expectations. Yes, it follows a group of friends who isolate themselves and end up propelled inevitably into tragedy, and yes, it reads like a train wreck in the best kind of way, so it's an understandable comparison. But it's also a deeply aggravating book, and I say that as someone who thoroughly enjoyed it.

We Went to the Woods focuses on Mack, a grad school dropout who, fleeing some kind of messy event in her past (more on that in a second), joins a group of idealistic young people who essentially endeavor to live in a modern-day socialist commune. That's basically the plot: many pages of gardening and rivalries and sexual tension and social activism ensue.

My biggest issue with this book was the way Mack's backstory was handled: what should have been presented to the reader on page one was nonsensically withheld for a lame kind of 'gotcha!' moment halfway through the book that added nothing to the narrative or the suspense. When Mack finally tells her story, it feels like a stranger reciting it rather than the narrator whose head we'd been inhabiting for several hundred pages - so little does the event actually impact her thoughts or actions (other than providing the incentive she needed to abandon her life and join this project).

My other main issue is pace: though I found this compelling, mostly due to Caite Dolan-Leach's elegant and clever writing, I imagine that for a lot of readers, it's probably going to drag. With a cover and title like this it's easy to imagine that you're in for some kind of thriller, but like We Went to the Woods' predecessor, Dead Letters, I fear that this book is going to suffer from 'marketed as a thriller, gets bad reviews because it's actually literary fiction' syndrome. However, where Dead Letters (an underrated gem, in my opinion) is the kind of book where a single word isn't out of place, We Went to the Woods languishes, unnecessarily so. I can only hope a few hundred more redundant words are chopped before its publication date.

But to be honest, the only reason I'm dwelling so much on the negatives is because I did enjoy it so much - it's the kind of book that fully earned my investment and therefore frustrated me all the more in the areas where it fell short. That said, there's so much to recommend it. This book is a contemporary zeitgeist, taking a premise that seems to belong in the 60s and modernizing it with urgency. In a scene where the characters learn the results of the 2016 election, their reactions are almost painfully recognizable, and the book's main themes and social commentary dovetail again and again, always asking the same question: how important is activism in late-stage capitalism; is it better to try something that turns out to be futile or not try anything at all? Though the characters do quite a bit of moralizing, Dolan-Leach doesn't, as she recognizes the complexity of the book's central conceit.

And on top of all that, I found it incredibly entertaining. Slow pace aside, I was so drawn into this story and couldn't wait to find out what happened next. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who needs their protagonists to be likable, but if you enjoy character studies about twisted, flawed individuals, this is a pretty good one.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having dropped out of her PhD and moved back in with her parents, Mackenzie feels lonely and directionless. She’s also fleeing some sort of difficult situation that, for the first half of the book, remains mostly unclear: something to do with a reality TV show and a controversy on social media; something that’s resulted in Mackenzie receiving hate mail and threats, and has cost her a lot of friends. So when she meets an idealistic group of friends – Louisa, Beau, Chloe and Jack – she’s in exactly the right place to be influenced and manipulated. It isn’t long before she agrees to join their latest project: setting up a self-sufficient commune in some woodland cabins owned by Louisa's family.

The five friends call their experiment ‘the Homestead’. They will forsake capitalism and technology as much as possible, surviving by trading homegrown goods at local markets. There’s no electricity, no running water and one shared vehicle. Their conversations touch on a whole smorgasbord of topical issues: climate change, GM crops, post-2016 politics, anti-capitalism, whether small-scale activism can make a difference. But they’re still a bunch of privileged twentysomethings, and they're still distracted by sex and jealousy. And in case we forget this is all happening in the 21st century, the narrative is also laced with references to online magazines like The New Inquiry and recent films such as 2015’s The Witch.

It’s a strong idea, and that’s half the problem. It feels like the concept came first, and everything else was forced to fit around it – there’s nothing organic (pun not intended) about these characters. Mackenzie’s history is obfuscated for (I assume) plot-driven reasons, but that happens at the expense of her plausibility. When the nature of the TV-show incident is revealed, it isn’t clear why it’s been kept from the reader for so long. Indeed, I could’ve done with the context of her academic interest in ‘closed communities’ to help me understand why such a (self-described) meek, introverted person would ever want to compete on reality TV. With few other identifiable personality traits, Mackenzie feels less like a believable human and more like a vessel for the ‘millennials start a commune’ plot idea.

There’s the introduction of a historical parallel: a century earlier, the Homestead was home to a group who’d escaped from a larger commune – the real-life Oneida Community – and Mackenzie makes a study of them. There’s a chapter in which Mackenzie goes home for Christmas and realises exactly how much her outlook has changed. There’s a brief bit of intrigue involving a neighbouring commune. These diversions, all interesting, unfortunately demonstrate how much better and fresher the narrative is when it moves away from the Homestead.

The group’s discussions of their motives always seem so shallow, and I’m not sure what to make of that – is it a deliberate attempt to mock and satirise millennials? Or are we meant to take their venture as an admirably earnest, if flawed, attempt to reject the demands of 21st-century living? The characters never really figure it out themselves, and maybe that’s the point, but it often makes for a frustrating read. Almost every subplot is ultimately pointless or irrelevant; I came away from the book feeling a bit cheated. If this review sounds unnecessarily harsh for a three-star rating, it’s because I’m annoyed at the squandered potential: We Went to the Woods is enjoyable and absolutely worth reading, but so many of its best ideas are thwarted by uneven characterisation, redundant plot points and puzzling word choices.

I received an advance review copy of We Went to the Woods from the publisher through NetGalley.

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[Susanne]

Unfortunately this novel was not for me. I dnf’d this at 24%. I think this was simply the case of my being the wrong reader for this book. I really like dystopian novels however, I found the writing to be sluggish and couldn’t get into the characters and felt like it was repetitive and was going nowhere.

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second book I've read this year about a modern-day commune. The first was The Ash Family. Usually what communes have in common is a charismatic male leader who draws in young females and subservient males.

This tale is a little different. The narrartor, Mackenzie, is a disgraced anthropology PHD candidate, who meets a young woman named Louisa while working for a caterer. Louisa and her 3 friends, Beau, Jack and Chloe, have an idea to live a self-sufficient life on a piece of property her father owns in upstate NY. The farm has a main building plus 5 one-room cabins. Mack is invited to join them.

Of course they have lots of ideas but not much practical experience. We know from the start that things don't work out as Mack begins telling the story of their failure. Mack is keeping her own shameful secret so perhaps that is why she doesn't seem to ever really question anyone else's past.

There is another commune nearby that has been successfully running for about 5 years and it's obvious that both Beau and Louisa have a history with these people. Little by little Mack learns what it is and it changes the course of their own efforts at living off the land.

Mack finds an old journal from a commune that was on this land a hundred years earlier and ever the anthropologist, begins jotting down ideas for a book, comparing all three, even doing a little research at the library.

The story is interesting but the pace plods a little. I often wished that Mackenzie would just ask her friends some pointed questions instead of working in the dark. And be more forthcoming herself! In this day and age, most everything can be learned on the internet with a Google search so so much for secrets.

Another thing both books I've read about modern-day communes have in common is their desire to dabble into some 'civil disobedience' ala Henry David Thoreau. Inevitably this leads to problems. Louisa is upset to learn that the farmer next to their property is encroaching on her land and using chemicals. What can they do when legal efforts don't seem to get them anywhere?

I can't really say that I cared for any of the characters. Free love is always part of these lifestyles, right? But can people really handle that when emotions come into play? The descriptions of working the land were interesting--it's certainly lots and lots of time-consuming, backbreaking work! You'd have to be pretty dedicated and not just dabbling with the whole idea of living off the land to really make it work. I didn't think this book added much to our understanding of communes or human relations, for that matter.

I received an arc from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Mackenzie - PhDiva Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you ever been at a point in your life where you wish you could go off the grid?

In We Went to the Woods, a former doctoral student named Mack moves back to her home in Ithaca following an ill-advised and scandalous move on a reality show that ultimately gets her kicked out of grad school.

When she leaves her parents’ home to follow a group of four, young, attractive strangers establishing a commune in upstate New York, Mack finds herself in another anthropological experiment. On a piece of farmland owned by one of their families, the five set up a small commune of cabins for sleeping, a main cabin for cooking, and a water source. As they settle into their new lives, things go well at first and their narrative is peppered with small moments of freedom as they embrace their departure from society. But over time, their interpersonal dynamics complicate and things begin to become tense as they interact with the much more established commune nearby.

This book is fraught with political and social tensions. A group of very privileged, white people set off to leave society behind, in a story that seems to mock the sort of social elitism of a group such as these people. Though their arguments center around pesticides and environmental concerns, the true question raised by this book is why people choose to leave their lives, rather than what they hoped to build. This group seemed ill-prepared to actually adapt to this way of living. Though they draw from the past, they also seem to lack the forethought to not fall into the same pattern of failure as groups who came before them.

An interesting book that may not appeal to many readers, but brings up interesting questions about why these sorts of communal living arrangements succeed or fail, and why someone may choose to leave their life behind, as well as to return to it. The characters are at once deep thinkers and incredibly shallow, preferring to showcase their political beliefs while ignoring any sort of emotions or feelings related to one another or themselves.

Thank you to Random House for my copy. Opinions are my own.

[Anita Pomerantz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is squarely in my wheelhouse and was probably the most engaging read I've picked up this year. I've always loved books with the equivalent of an ensemble cast and where the characters are not necessarily likable. Think Secret History by Donna Tartt, The Girls by Emma Cline, or Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman, and you'll get my drift. If you need to love the characters to enjoy a novel, I don't suggest picking this one up.

Mack, Chloe, Louisa, Beau and Jack are present day millenial types who decide to try to live sustainably off the land, growing their own food, and sans electricity or plumbing in upstate New York. As someone who was born in Ithaca and lived upstate for twenty years, I think the characterization of upstate NY and the weather and challenges with living off the land year around were well portrayed. There's a lot of underlying tension, both hostile and sexual, in this book, not simply amongst the five aforementioned, but with the neighboring Collective.

The author does a nice job building suspense throughout though I felt like there were a few unanswered plot points in the end that made for a less than perfectly satisfying reading experience. Nonetheless, I love a dark, suspenseful, character driven novel, and this one checked a lot of boxes for me personally.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Off the grid. Roughing it. Homesteading. Commune. Cult. Utopian Community. Sharing everything. Sexual independence. Sustainable living. Healthy living. Survivalists. Environmentalists. Doomsday preppers. Self-sufficiency. Independence. Living free from the power of society and the power of another. Anti-capitalism. This book covers all of the above and then some.

The Homestead and The Collective; two neighboring communes in Upstate New York, and people with secret (and not so secret) pasts. The Homestead and it’s 5 inhabitants are our major characters as we read about these twenty something year olds dropping out of the mainstream and creating their own home base values and becoming a family of sorts together on The Homestead.

The story unfolds in the expected manner of getting to know each other, start fixing up the abandoned farm, begin priority planning, chopping wood for heat and cooking, bartering for food, planning gardens, farming animals, harvesting - the reader is taken through the different seasons and I found that part quite interesting in how you had to plan ahead or else The Homestead and it’s people will not survive. The Homestead group appeared to have their act together in terms of resources. They had water. A compostable toilet. A pond to take baths in and a diy sauna. They had sustenance although at times it was too much of one good thing (like zucchini or tomatoes). If and when they found themselves lacking or needing companionship or some item, they would turn to their neighboring people at The Collective. However, there is some sordid history at the Collective and a “cult leader” who initially started this commune - himself and five young girls. Yeah, that’s trouble. And there’s more...There’s some drug use /activity going on there as well. And some criminal intent/terrorism. And fracking. And pesticide/poisoning.

The story was mostly plain vanilla, with musings, observations and reporting of goings on around and between the people, the land, society, etc. Imagine you keeping a daily journal while living in a commune and not involved with alot of other people or outside world or technology. There’s not too much to write going on about in a daily life as such, so there were times the story moved slowly. However, there were other instances that picked up the pace of the story and provided some interest and intrigue.

This was just an just an okay read of a handful of disillusioned young people wanting to create their own society, change their unhappy personal lives, their lifestyle, protecting and communing with the earth 🌍 and trying to make a statement about corporate greed and governance. When they got homesick, they went back home for a visit, only to be clearly reminded why they sought out their communal lifestyle in the first place. Some communal members came from well heeled families/professionals and so had money, but craved to live the simple and free communal life. Funny how when money was needed (for whatever) they very easily went back to their former lives to acquire it and then came back again. Wait...how does that work? Isn’t it an all or nothing commitment and lifestyle? Utopian communities typically fail to succeed because the people succumb back to human nature.

If you were ever interested in how these communities are created and how they work (or don’t), this book will be informative to you.

[Tes - paperbackbones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ohhh this was a disappointment. With cover blurbs describing it to be a read-alike for The Secret History, I expected to love this.

I haven't rolled my eyes this much in ages. The character are all the wrong kind of pretentious + feature white girls with food names and culturally appropriative dreadlocks + white dudes who we're supposed to accept as being insanely attractive, inspiring lust and jealousy from every single woman in the book based on just that fact that he's got a man-bun and...? Not much else. Clunky classical references that seem entirely ornamental and have no impact on actual characterization whatsoever. Unbelievable character motivations. Poor pacing.

There are so many things I could go on about, but honestly I don't want to waste any more time on this book than I've already put into it. I would have DNF'd this book time and time again if I wasn't dedicated to finishing because of a buddy read obligation.

If you want a well-written book similar to The Secret History that also involves a close knit group of friends who choose to go live off the grid then skip this and pick up Tana French' The Likeness instead.

*review copy provided by publisher

[Jypsy]

We Went to the Woods is just what it says, a group of people in the woods. Take a few millennials with zero life experience and entitlement issues and send them forth to live off the land. It's an old idea with many names-commune, cult, intentional community. By any name, it's not plausible in my mind for this group of people. The main character is already screwed up and self centered because she defines her value based on social media/reality television shows. Seriously? They are doomed before the story unfolds. It's too many different intentions trying to live as one. The living is harder than expected, and there are a host of other issues. Overall, I found the entire concept too cliche to garner much intrest. I wanted to like it, but it's never that simple. The characters are not likeable and the story is contrite. It's an unfortunate miss for me. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

[Bill Kupersmith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was probably too generous in giving stars, but my disappointment was due less to flaws in this book than to comparison with The Secret History or The Likeness, which are beyond compare. Here the upstate New York setting was effective. The narrator Mack was immature but sympathetic. It was obvious that the ecological beliefs of the others at the Homestead were mostly affected. The story dragged badly but the scene when Mack’s trying to rescue her mad companions in the snow storm was scary as all get out.

[Seema Rao · Rating 3 out of 5]

tl:dr: When idealism becomes reality, dire consequences can occur.

I wanted to like this book. I suspect I was the target audience. A group of people disenchanted with our food production and capitalism decide to start their own off the grid farm. As is expected with any event with a group of people trapped together, intrigue and politics ensue. I found this book tried to hard. Every bespoke meal was discussed, painfully stereotypical as they were. Even worse, the characters were unlikeable in the way GOOP blog posts are. It was almost like Porlandia was made into a character-driven novel. It was just too, too much.


Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.



Seema Rao Write : Instagram| Blog| Twitter|

[Bandit · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t know enough about this book going in and knew nothing of the author. It was just something offered to me as a widget from the publishers based on previous selections and well, it had a commune Which is oh so close to a cult. Cults being a plot aspect virtually irresistible for me. Seriously, though, there must be some noncultish communes out there, right. Or is it always inevitably reduces down to men trying to have sex with either underage women or too many different women or both. Ulterior motives. Seems to be an unavoidable feature of what otherwise appears like a very noble enterprise. In this case, to step away from societal restrains, live intentionally, off the grid, grow your own food, mind your carbon footprint and all that. It’s a lot of work, but it does provide a fairly viable alternative to the consumerism based social media obsessed society. It’s certainly kinder to the Mother Earth. Basically, for a certain person of a certain mindset (say, a burned out millennial)it’s a pretty easy sell. And so our main protagonist, Mack, is sold. And she sets off with her newly found best friends to live differently. To the woods they go. Everyone’s got their own reasons to be there, but from the very start we are told the grand communal living experiment didn’t quite go to plan. Then Mack takes us back in time to see exactly why. You’d think this can be pretty self explanatory…after all, how long can young white privileged first world entitled young people from arguably the worst generations on record can thrive getting by on their own, dealing with all the privations and challenges off grid living has to offer. And sure enough it isn’t their actual skillsets or enterprenurialship that does them in, it’s the self righteousness. And, of course, the inevitable sexual politics. Mack’s sticking around, though, she has a past she’s trying to get away from, a public shame. The way it’s set up in the book, you’d think she’s the new Amanda Knox or Michele Carter or Monica Lewinsky, in fact when you finally find out the real story, it’s quite underwhelming. Mack has done something unethical and not entirely moral, but it is only in our progressive modern age of oppressing political correctness and oppressing prevalence of social media that a promising young woman would be prosecuted this way for something like that. And so, at first, the commune seems like a lovely, not to mention practical, solution, and then slowly she (utilizing her anthropology education) observes it all go south. What’s interesting with this novel is that neither Mack nor her friends, associates and lovers are all that likeable of characters. They are mostly the sort of people you’d expect them to be given their age and chosen lifestyle. Which, conveniently enough, excuses them from being the more conventionally engaging cast of players. So this isn’t necessarily a character driven, but there is so much more to it. The writing is so smart, so emotionally intelligent, so psychologically on. And the story itself is so compelling. It draws you in completely. I mean, I found the characters mostly a bunch of tedious twats (albeit to varying degrees), I’d never want to spend any time with them in real life and yet in book form, I was completely engaged in their narratives. And that’s the power of awesome storytelling. There seems to be some redemption toward the end, some newly found awareness of personal smallness on the global scale, the humble pie isn’t quite being served up yet, but it might be baking. So yeah, a great story. Even if you’re not especially interested in cults and communal living, you’ve got to admit the psychology behind it is fascinating. But then again, much like socialism, mostly only a good idea on paper. And for all the apparent pluses, there are the inevitable minuses, secrets, personal agendas, manipulations and so on. Ideological purity doesn't quite seem compatible with basic (wo)mankind nature. Makes you think, this one does, heavy heavy thoughts. Seriously, though, read this book, it’s so good. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

[Sheila · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars--somewhere between "it was OK" and "I liked it."

Kept my interest and I enjoyed the narrator's voice, but it felt like there was a whole section missing where we get to know the characters. I also would have enjoyed more about the previous community in the area; sadly that plot point went nowhere.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed the story of 4 young adults who started a farm in NY. Very eclectic characters throughout the story with a throwback to a simpler time yet set today with modern conveniences. I wonder if a book 2 will be written? Would be interesting.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very different and interesting tale of a group of young people who create a small community off the grid. It's full of well developed characters, compelling, descriptive and moving. Although I didn't agree with many of their idealistic views, or even really like each person, I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend this one. Thank you to the publishers for the ARC.

[Jourden Davis · Rating 1 out of 5]

My rating: ⭐️🌟(1.5)/5. Let me preface this by saying that I respect anyone who can write and publish a book, and appreciate any author who creates something they love. I just might not love it too.
You know that one movie you watch where nothing really happens & you’re just waiting & waiting and when something finally does happen you’re just left thinking: wait...that’s it? That was this entire book for me. I was excited reading the plot thinking this was going to be interesting, entertaining etc. Instead I got 350 pages of characters with zero development, that to me, had zero redeemable qualities. Honestly, I hated the characters. A plot that held a lot of promise, with hints of terrible and wild secrets that once revealed....were so bland and only half explained. There was also the random mixing of these historical letters about halfway through....that ultimately turned out to mean nothing really. When big things finally did happen, the news was delivered so poorly & nonchalantly that I didn’t even realize what happened. It honestly felt like the author had about 20 different ways they wanted this book to go and instead of picking one or two, sprinkled in tiny undeveloped bits of all 20 plots. What sucks the most is that had this book been actually developed or had a real path & redeemable characters, it could have easily been a wonderful 4-5 star read!! I know I am being harsh but really and truly this book was not at all for me. I feel like over 200 of the 350 pages was just nonsense that didn’t even develop the plot in any way. Also parentheses were excessively used in random spots that didn’t really make sense? Or to add extra info that literally did not matter in any way shape or form. There was also about three typos which drove me insane.

[Diane Hernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five millennials try to live off the grid with horrible results in We Went to the Woods.

Mack has a secret that caused her to be unemployed and shunned by the world. When she meets Louisa at a high society fundraising party as a bartender, she meets Louisa’s friends, Chloe, Beau, and Jack. She also buys into Louisa’s plan for the group to move to upstate New York and live off the land. Unfortunately, the romantic picture by Thoreau doesn��t work as they expected. Sexual tensions and rivalries, lack of farming/survival skills, and headstrong roommates cause the drama here.

I enjoyed the build-up to the group’s arrival at the Homestead. However, I really couldn’t get past three things. First, I didn’t like or care what happened to any of the characters. Second, you knew from the beginning something “horrible” was going to happen because of heavy foreshadowing rather than building up suspense to naturally lead the reader to that knowledge. Finally, it seemed full of stereotypical rich spoiled millennials. Couldn’t they have put one person who wasn’t such a dick in the story? Someone to root for? I didn’t see anyone like that throughout this novel. If it bothers me, a baby boomer, I could see it being perceived even more negatively by real millennials.

While I didn’t enjoy We Went to the Woods as a thriller because it didn’t have the correct pacing, it may be acceptable to some readers as literary fiction. The discussions of the history of communes and living off the land was interesting. However, I think it is a difficult read if you need to like or identify with a novel’s characters. Overall, a 3 star read for me.

Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

[Elyse · Rating 2 out of 5]

NetGalley ARC.

After some deliberation, I'm lowering my rating from 3 to 2. There really was not much I liked about this book. The characters are entitled millennials who decide to start a small commune. Ugh, even the premise makes me cringe. They were all incredibly unlikable and I had a hard time connecting with any of them. The story is told through Mack's eyes and she's just awful. She's been villified over something stupid (Yes, it was crappy what she did. No one deserves to be outed by someone else. My SIL did it to my BIL to their grandparents. But c'mon, who cares. They were on reality TV what did they expect? Isn't that the whole point of reality TV? To talk shit about each other, stir up drama, and divulge secrets?) which makes her run away like a scared little whiny baby instead of being the adult she is supposed to be. I was waiting the whole book for the REAL reason she was escaping the real world. But no, it was just that stupid little incident.

So she meets some other millennials who invite to her live with them in a commune-like setting in the woods where they will grow and raise their own food and live without electricity. But they keep their cell phones charged whenever they go into town. So phew. 🙄 The only one who isn't from wealthy stock is Mack. So it's even more of a joke. Plus there are so many unanswered questions at the end of this book. SO. MANY. I finished it feeling so unsatisfied. And the whole book has nothing to do with the ending, really. What a mess. I wasted 3 weeks of my life trying to get through this.

[book rat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m prefacing this review with a reminder that to me, two stars only means that this book was not for me and I hope it finds a loving home.

There is no part of my soul, conscious or unconscious, that yearns to go into the woods and test my strength against nature.

I picked this book up because it was compared to The Secret History, which I had finished the day before. And I understand the comparison. They follow a similar structure: young, idealistic, glamorous people, soaring to delicious heights before their inevitable fall. It’s just that I am enchanted by ecstatic frenzy, and I am not enchanted by communal living. Not even sort of.

I wasn’t the ideal audience for this book. I haven’t read any Emerson and barely remember Walden. The characters didn’t hook me with their glamorous ideals because I didn’t find their ideals glamorous.

Read it if you are as sickly fascinated by watching self-righteous, wealthy granolas descend into disaster as I am watching arrogant, wealthy intellectuals descend into evil.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having grown up in the 60's, I'm always drawn to books about cults and communes so this was an interesting novel to read. And while I never had a desire to live off the grid, I understand why young people would choose this lifestyle and attempt to live off of what they can produce on their own. So when Mack, on the heels of an embarrassing scandal, rashly decides to move to the Homestead with four strangers, we realize it's her way of starting over and maybe a chance for her to redeem herself. For a while things work well; they share chores, plant vegetables, swim in the pond, and quite literally share each other. But that isn't where it ends. Some are more reactive and crave challenging the status quo by disrupting the "establishment." And of course, that never ends well. This isn't a thriller and the pacing is often slow, but that didn't bother me as it seemed to mirror the seasons and lifestyle they adopted. Overall, I enjoyed the novel as it's very different from what I'm used to reading!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

[Cari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dolan-Leach is a powerhouse writer - I'm looking forward to more from her. This novel follows Mack, a young woman desperate to reinvent her life after a public shaming. When she returns to her home of upstate New York, she falls in with a crowd of people her age who endeavor to live life off the grid. Feisty Louisa, the group's ringleader, has a small plot of land where they can start their own farm - and so they go off to create the Homestead. But they are not alone in the woods, and what they do there might be their undoing.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a public humiliation that isn't revealed until mid-book, protagonist Mack meets up casually with a group of four others, goes off with them to live off the grid. I think I've read too many of these pressure cooker situations to be either intrigued or elucidated by any new treatment. T. C. Boyle's Drop City covered the same ground, and better.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 3 out of 5]

via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
'After that first chilly evening out in the country, we were like unlanded peasants bewtiched by the promise of future rootedness.'

Working one night at a fundraiser behind the bar, Mack enters a caption contest and wins, drawing the attention of beautiful Louisa Stein- Jackson. This is the real win of the night. Invited to her garden party on a cold New York winter night she meets Chloe, Beau, and Jack when she accepts the invitation and is soon charmed by their stimulating conversation and beauty. A week later, Louisa’s seductive dream of running an idyllic Homestead together has taken root in them all. They should have paused to really think about that word, idyllic. Homesteading is anything but, and an organic existence doesn’t happen because you embrace the romanitcism of purity and freedom, you know, everything sold in ads that is all sunshine and beekeeping. But Louisa assures them, this isn’t some ‘half-baked spiritual notion of cutting themselves off from the world”. No, they just want to know what they are eating… be closer to the process. Not ingest poisons that GE farmers provide! It’s not quite the reality twenty-somethings lacking skills are going to be able to achieve without making mistakes. Certainly Louisa’s family wealth doesn’t hurt yet there is irony there I think. Louisa is adamantly against capitilism but a part of the priveldged. Can you really achive this utopia when you are grasping the wealth you’re turning away from for something more genuine? Oh well, nothing wrong with money, so long as they aren’t giving it to those nasty corporations, right? Before they venture forth into the woods, a strange incident seems to seal the deal, driving them into a deeper intimacy when they witness an accident. Certainly it feels ominous.

So begins the farming and as long as they are together that’s all that matters, right? The tender intimacy of it all? Mistakes will happen, they aren’t fools. How together are they really? Beau is a mystery (Mack tells us this), as are his disappearances, regardless of how Louisa seethes inside, it’s accepted by the friends as just his way. But his friendliness with neighbors at the ‘collective’ isn’t going over well, particularly the females. It doesn’t stop Lousia from letting him into her cabin late at night. Are Louisa and Beau really together? In fact, they all seem to take part in nighttime wanderings, except for Mack. Mack is the watcher, desperately jealous for her own trysts. Too cowardly to take what she wants, instead content to yearn from afar. Naturally she is as pulled in by Beau’s magnetism as the rest. Jack is the most solid, Jack actually knows a thing or two about farming. Why can’t she desire Jack, Jack is someone she could have if she wanted. Ah, that’s why…

Happy to be out of New York, she has her own dark shame to escape having been involved in something called ‘The Millienail Experiment’, while trying complete her PH.D. program in Anthropolgy. This could be the perfect escape from her current bleak reality, this thing that Jack calls the “Grand Experiment”. If she nearly drowns in freezing water with the fragile Chloe, well it’s worth it. Here she can be invisible from the outside world and yet share profound intimacy with a chosen few. Her deepest desire is for someone to explain her to herself. Maybe they can!

The land begins to feel as much hers once she settles in with the others. Too, the sense of community she didn’t realize she had lacked is nearly enough to keep her warm through the cold nights, as is her hunger to be self-sufficient. Yet the relationships are not as they seem. Louisa and Beau aren’t new to the Homestead having worked the last year on it. But this is a “collective endevor” so why focus on that? Here they can sustain themselves, find meaning, not like the world they feel has nothing to offer them- educated and meandering, society treating their generation as if they created all the problems that is their inheritance. Little does she realize how much animosity Louisa feels for the local farmer whose land borders hers, farmers who grow genitcally engineered corn. Nor the trouble it will bring.

Beofre long Louisa begins to obsess over Chuck Larson, doing all she can to disrupt the farmer. Fennel, one of Beau’s girls from the collective is more than just a distraction. There is a bigger story than Mack knew, and soon after joining Beau and Louisa protesting fracking, she meets Mathew, the head of collectives and is privy to plans to stop Lakeview from successfully taking over land locally. Getting entangled with others wasn’t what they signed up for. There is a thin line between passionate causes and crimal acts. Through seasons of exhuasting work and fruitful harvest, the idle is disturbed by the infectious presence of the neighboring collective and it’s leader. Alongisde their own story is the tale of an early attempt at Utopia in the form of writings by a man named William Fulsome. The hardships aren’t that much different from the ones they too face. What will get them all in the end? Will it be the elements, their dreams or each other? It’s wise to remember that all families, whether self-made or not, have seeds of destruction and secrets they keep from others. Idealism is contagious, reality always creeps in…

Publication Date: July 2, 2019

Random House

[Nina Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hated to put the book down and now I’m sad that I’ve finished. It’s not a thriller, nothing supernatural. Parts of it were mundane, i.e the ongoing descriptions of planting vegetables and other chores. Still the moody and mysterious nature of the characters and the knowledge that it was not going to end well kept me turning the pages. There was that sense of foreboding throughout the story. I think they were all crazy. It’s a good read.

[Niks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sigh*

THIS BOOK. THISSSSS BOOOOOK HAD THE AUDACITY TO MAKE ME HOPEEEE.

Honestly, it’s a 3.2/5 for me. I wanted to give it a solid 4.0/5; but the last chapter knocked solid points off this score.

First off:
I loved the first half;
Things were brewing, you meet everyone fairly early, and you could see the blooming of a mystery of sorts - an inevitable end that everyone was tunneling towards.

Sure the characters were pretentious, but they acknowledged this much on several occasions.

But then, the mystery failed. I felt like the twists I was craving plot wise were never sated.

This book had potential.

It was sexy as fuck, in a “wow that is wild as hell and this sort of physical intimacy needs to be real” without the standards of swoony romance.

Five people living out in the woods? Bacchanal references? My little The Secret History loving heart was ready for the chemistry of the cast and the twisted relationships, the sexual tension and unsavory acts; but it ended up just falling extremely flat.

Whatever reveals towards the end weren’t earth shattering, mind blowing revelations, and I’m not sure if I’m a low key conspiracist that thrives on the most outlandish drama, but I built up an entirely different mystery contrary to the one which unfolded as Mack tells their story.

For some reason, the central issue of the book remained obscure and ultimately, unresolved. I wasn’t sure where it was going or why any of it was important. I wanted to stick around in hopes of an escalation of action taken by our five main characters as a group, but things split off in the last 150 pages and I’m aware that I sound extremely vague, but the entire premise of the “We” of “we went to the woods” was lost.

But the biggest disappointment for me was the ending.
It was rushed, inconclusive, and overall, didn’t encompass anything remotely resembling “an ending” given the book’s pace and plot content.

Did Mack change from the start to end? A little bit. Was the Novel’s intent to discuss her change? No. But then again, like I said; I’m not sure exactly what this novel was attempting to accomplish.

To be honest, nothing much happened. The writing is prose-y, pretty and sprinkled with some light academia: Thoreau, Aristotle, Plato, Emerson; and its a pretty immersive and easy read, but mannnn, it just didn’t go where I expected it to go nor did it pleasantly surprise me.

In the end; we suffer as Mack, our first person narrator does - she mentions several times that she doesn’t really know the people she lives with, and it’s true, because when you finish We Went To The Woods, you still have no idea who anyone really is, nor why Louisa and Beau did the things they did.

There were a few instances where some plot points are mentioned and never brought up again, and you just have to wonder why so many things were left unsaid. You never really uncover half of the secrets Louisa and Beau were harboring.
Are you left to guess at them? Yes, sure. But do you really care by the end of the book that the lack of answers for the truth would bother you? No.

If you go into this thinking: yesssssssss, just like The Secret History, you’ve been warned. It’s nothing nearly as surreally whimsical nor self-important or indulgent as the world of TSH, nor does this have nearly as complex characters and intricate relationships.

Now I need to go start another book because as I write this review, I’m realizing how entirely unsatisfied and somewhat frustrated I am.