The Woman in the Woods: A Dark Psychological Thriller

By: Jonas Saul

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Something is wrong—horribly wrong—in the deep woods of Oregon.

People age at accelerated rates and then disappear. Hundreds of disappearances have occurred in the area for decades—a veritable Bermuda Triangle on land. Even the authorities sent in to investigate the disappearances have gone missing. After that, the government stepped in and fenced off the entire area.

But when four strangers miss their train and wander onto the site searching for shelter, they discover what was left behind. After one of their four goes missing, they decide to leave the area. Something’s toying with them, something ancient and malicious, and it doesn’t want them to leave.
It’s wise enough to understand them and powerful enough to control them.
It’s also hungry, and it needs to be satiated.

The Virtual Voice

The virtual voice, it was too disconnected, not enough fluctuation, most of the time monotone, and sometimes the sentences were broken up. In my opinion, this story would’ve been really good if it had been read by a narrator.

I listen to the entire story, I considered no longer listening in the beginning of the story, in the middle of the story and fought my way through to the end. I think I kept hoping for it to get better and found myself wanting to hear how it ended. I believe my struggle was the virtual voice.

Story line was good. Narration was terrible.

Did not like virtual voice. Too choppy no emotion detected where necessary to create our evoke emotion.

Hard to follow

It’s narrated by virtual voice (nothing wrong with that, I just didn’t notice anything warning me of that before I downloaded it, so I’m passing the into along..), and the story is just insane. It bounces back and forth between timelines. I love psychological thrillers, but this just isn’t what I would consider one.

I live in the area where this happened and the weird references thrown in from time to time add nothing to the story and if I wasn’t familiar with them, I’d be confused.

At one point somebody is referred to as spending a lot of his time at Powell’s. (That’s a bookstore.) if somebody had tried to explain why what Bookstore Boy was doing was out of the ordinary by saying “he spent some time at (choose some random, independently owned bookstore you’ve probably never heard of)” it would not help paint the picture. Also, the multiple references to the duo hiking from Oregon to California needing a bank machine was weird. They’re backpacking. Why the obsession with an ATM?

I listened to it all, because I can’t quit things, but at 1.7 speed it took me over three weeks because I had to talk myself into listening to it just a bit at a time. (I work overnights in a quiet office and would rather turn this book off after half an hour or so and sit in the quiet than keep listening to it.)