Wyrdwood

LoveReading4Kids Says

Steeped in mystery and slow-simmering suspense, Curtis Jobling’s Wyrdwood melds the menace of rural folklore (meet Twig Man, if you dare…) with a relatable modern-day context. In this case, when Kiki returns home from school to surprise her writer dad (who’s known as “The King of Creepy”) ahead of the Christmas break and finds a strange woman in her deceased mother’s place.   

An edgy ambience is evoked from the off, when Kiki’s train pulls into the end-of-the-line village of Merryweather-by-the-Sea and readers become immersed in Wyrdwood, “an impenetrable crescent of wilderness” that lies beyond Merryweather’s rolling fields.  

Early on, we’re introduced to an intriguing cast of small-town characters, whom the narrative follows in episodic fashion, layering the plot, and weaving the story, with a jolt coming when Kiki enters her family home to find a strange woman wearing her mother’s clothes: “It wasn’t every day that your father literally picked up a strange woman in the woods and brought her home.”

Stranger still to Kiki, all the villagers have fallen for beautiful Fay, who has a habit of wearing a twig in her hair. At the same time, the village teacher has noticed a change in her pupils’ behaviour — they’ve taken to drawing “scarecrow stick figures”, with the “impossibly spindly limbs and bony fingers” of one child’s drawing looking especially “demonic”. Then follows a series of eerie sightings that escalate to so much more.  

Painstakingly plotted, Wyrdwood weaves a sinister story that twists in unexpected ways, and never lets up on suspense.

Joanne Owen

Find This Book In