This Wretched Valley
In This Wretched Valley from Jenny Kiefer, four friends (or friends-adjacent) go camping in the Kentucky wilderness in order to climb and map out a new rock that no one has discovered before, all of them for various important to them reasons. Once they get out of town, they have spotty (or mostly no) cell service which turned out to be very easy for me to believe because even though I assume the town of Livingston mentioned in the novel is fictional, I was listening to this audiobook as I was driving through Kentucky, and I happened to drive through a town called Livingston, and I didn’t get cell service while I was in the town, so…
My good girl, Laika, ready to go camping.
It’s easy to underestimate how scary it can be not to have cell service, especially if you’re a certain age, as I am. When I went to college on the opposite end of the state from my Appalachian Virginia hometown, nobody had a cell phone except some people on tv or in movies had 5-lb bricks or car phones. So back then, maybe it would have been less scary because that was just life. But now? In the middle of the woods where every crackle of a leaf or snap of a stick breaking could be Bigfoot or Chupacabra or a regular old serial killer? I at least need to have my final screams recorded so the 9-1-1 tape can be played on the episode of Unsolved Mysteries they will make about my disappearance.
Anyway, as the very good boy and at least part Australian cattle dog (just like my old girl Laika, also rescued from a shelter) alerts them almost immediately, evil is afoot.
Seven months later, three of their bodies are found - one of them basically a skeleton, one with organs missing, and one horribly mutilated with extremities missing - are found, and the fourth, Dylan, is never found. Knowing the end doesn’t make following their story any less harrowing as they are unable to escape the woods, time stops having any meaning, and they become unable to trust each other or even themselves.
The audiobook production was very good, and the narrator, Megan Tusing, brought the characters to life, making it easy to empathize with and fear for them (and with them).
Also: slight spoiler in the image to the right - a piece of art made by the author I picked up from her store, Butcher Cabin Books, while I was on my road trip to Louisville, KY.
Support your favorite indie bookstore (and me) by using my link to order the audiobook from https://libro.fm/referral?rf_code=lfm60355 OR if you prefer using your eyes to read, support your favorite indie (and give us both 20% off if it’s your first purchase) by using my link at https://refer.bookshop.org/candidanorwood.
