I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Devin Green wakes in the middle of the night to find two men in her bedroom. No stranger to a fight, she calls to her foster parents for help, but it soon becomes clear this is a planned abduction—one everyone but Devin signed up for. She’s shoved in a van and driven deep into the Idaho woods, where she’s dropped off with a cohort of equally confused teens. Finally, two camp counselors inform them that they've all been enrolled in an experimental therapy program. If the campers can learn to change their self-destructive ways—and survive a fifty-days hike through the wilderness—they’ll come out the other side as better versions of themselves. Or so the counselors say.

Devin is immediately determined to escape. She’s also determined to ignore Sheridan, the cruel-mouthed, lavender-haired bully who mocks every group exercise. But there’s something strange about these woods—inhuman faces appearing between the trees, visions of people who shouldn't be there flashing in the leaves—and when the campers wake up to find both counselors missing, therapy becomes the least of their problems. Stranded and left to fend for themselves, the teens quickly realize they’ll have to trust each other if they want to survive. But what lies in the woods may not be as dangerous as what the campers are hiding from each other—and if the monsters have their way, no one will leave the woods alive.

Short and Sweet Review

Devin wakes up in the middle of the night to find two men trying to abduct her, the only thing is this abduction was planned by her foster parents. Devin is being taken away to one of those wilderness therapy programs. Devin isn’t the only one she finds herself with Ollie who was also taken in the night. Soon they find themselves taken deep into the Idaho Woods where they meet three other teens and two camp counselors. The group of teens are informed that this therapy is supposed to help them overcome their destructive ways over the course of a fifty day hike. Devin is trying to escape but hasn’t found the opportunity and she also finds she has a big problem with Sheridan, one of the other campers who just says cruel things to everyone and doesn’t take anything seriously. After waking up one night the group of teens find that both of their counselors are missing and that theres something strange in the woods. Now the group of five has to make it out before they become stuck in the woods.

I feel like most of us have heard about these therapy programs, and if you know Paris Hilton you know how detrimental some of them can be. The book starts off with Devin being abducted in the middle of the night and if that’s not traumatic I don’t know what is. In this case Devin wasn’t the only one who experienced this so did Ollie, Aidan, Sheridan, and Hannah. Each kid is sent to this camp because their parents think they have something they need to work on. We get both Devin and Ollie’s POVs which is beneficial especially when we see the group have to split up. Devin has a hard exterior but she’s actually a softie. I think with her growing up in foster care and having to take care of herself she’s made it seem like she has a lot to work on but through out the course of the book we can see she’s already quite reflective. Ollie is the actual softie and we can see that being on this journey he has to gain the hard exterior to survive. We see that Devin has the biggest problem in this book is with Sheridan and how she blows off the group activities and makes the others feel bad about themselves, and Devin always stands up to the bullies and that’s why she won’t back down when it comes to Sheridan. When the counselors go missing is when we have our characters go into survival mode. There’s something strange in the woods and it just happens to be something called mimics, they can take on different shapes and their goal is to make the characters get to a place so low that they want to give up. When the group learns this they begin to have a hard time knowing whether they can trust each other but one thing is for sure they need to make it out of the woods alive.

Overall, this was a gripping book and it will keep you on the edge of your seat. I did like that the author brought attention to these therapy camps, it has been talked about more recently but I do think there could be more discussion. I enjoyed every character and learning about their lives outside of this camp got pretty deep and each character and story felt real. I would recommend this book not only for the eerie feeling you get when reading about their race against time to get out of the woods but also just to survive and make it through life when you’ve been given a bad hand.