Bern's Bookcase: Big Woods Book Review

Can you solve the mystery 

of the missing children in Big Woods?

It’s 1989 and ten year old Lucy disappears from small town Texas. The story is told in alternating POVs between Leah (big sister, age 14) and Sylvie a nurse who seems to know something about the missing children. 

The book starts off BIG with Lucy’s disappearance and an eerie line about “who will save the children”. Her disappearance is tinged with talk of satanic rituals and other bodies recovered in Big Woods. The police have no clues and search of the woods only turns up Lucy’s coin purse. The book quickly turns into more of a slow burn read as the weeks tick by. It kept me turning the pages because I needed to know what happened to Lucy and how Sylvie was connected to it all.

One of the things I really enjoyed was the connection between the two sisters. It was obvious that they had a powerfully strong bond. Leah refused to give up on finding Lucy, even when the adults around her seemed to accept that she was most likely dead and would never be found, including her parents. The sisters’ bond/connection was so strong that Leah was having visions/dreams that she felt certain were communications from Lucy trying to aid her in finding and saving her. The adults in her life worried about her visions but she carried on (getting into a few hair raising situations), filled with hope that she would uncover what happened to Lucy.

I connected with Leah's character the most. Her emotions, pain and struggle were well crafted. Sylvie was also a dynamic character for me. As her story unfolds and we see the twists & turns her life has taken her part in the story begins to make sense. I couldn’t help wanting to shout at someone to just listen to her! 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t a big fan of how things simply tied up neatly at the end. There were so many different elements brought up in the book - satanic rituals & devil worshippers, black roses being delivered at the high school, the church communities in an uproar, psychics, corrupt law enforcement officials, etc and those things were simply swept to the wayside and never mentioned again. I enjoyed how Cobb tied in all these aspects which were relevant in the 80s but it felt unfinished to me. 

Overall, I definitely enjoyed Big Woods by May Cobb and in some ways it was a great read. Yet, in others is was a bit lacking for me. This is May Cobb’s debut and as such I can see lots of potential but I also feel like she might have tried to do too much at once here so there were parts that were left undeveloped in my opinion. It was a good read, just not one that I think will remain vividly with me over time.