Forest

The bed is empty.

That's the opening sentence in the first and second last chapter of the thriller The God of the Woods by Liz Moore.

In this multilayered story, two children had gone missing in the Adirondack forest. As it turns out, the son disappeared in 1961 and was never found; the daughter went missing in 1975. The terrain of the forest, dense with thick underbrush, was to be blamed. The staggering loss of two children meant involvement and connection of many people spanning over a decade: their parents, the summer camp counselors and staff, the police officers.

That means a plot with characters as complicated and mysterious as the Adirondack forest. To make sure I didn't get lost in the woods, I read the book next to handwritten notes in which I jotted down the character arc.  

With that, I navigated the woods like Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings.