Book Review: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Through the Woods by Emily Caroll

My Rating: 🌟🌟

Book Blurb

It came from the woods. Most strange things do.
Five mysterious, spine-tingling stories follow journeys into (and out of?) the eerie abyss.
These chilling tales spring from the macabre imagination of acclaimed and award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll.
Come take a walk in the woods and see what awaits you there…

My Thoughts

I’m a huge fan of art — even though I can’t for the life of me draw an amoeba with my scrawny little fingers– so, naturally, I love graphic novels and webcomics… I admire all of the creators of graphic novels because what’s better than a story is a story with some gorgeous art. However, I am a little disappointed with Through the Woods by Emily Caroll.

As soon as I’d heard about it and seen the gorgeous cover, I had really wanted to read it and enjoy it. In fact, this is one of the prettiest books I’ve seen in my entire life, and I’ve seen quite a few, so that’s saying something. I loved the artwork — it was colorful and bright and just plain beautiful.

There’s no other way to say it, but it turns out that art is the only thing that’s good about this book, as none of these stories were half decent. In fact, most of them were either boring or felt incomplete, other than the last one — it was called The Nesting Place –which was…okay. The other stories were kinda underdeveloped. They just felt like story-prompts and not full stories. However, I did enjoy The Nesting Place.

One of the reasons I had wanted to read this one is because it is a horror anthology, and one of my blogging friends, Suzan, had wanted me to read horror to spice up my reading experience lol. Unfortunately, this book wasn’t terrifying or unsettling or spine-chilling, as most reviews say. It was just… okay. I wouldn’t have missed out on anything had I not read it (other than the gorgeous art that I need to print and fix on my walls – jk). But now that I’ve tested the waters, I’d pick up some mild horror anthologies or even the Stephen King books.

I don’t think I’ll recommend it to anyone because I didn’t like it, but most of the people who read it loved it a lot, so I’m just a minority and you should take my review with a grain of salt, lol.

So, do you want to read this book? Do you like anthologies? Share your thoughts in the comments.