This Wretched Valley

Horror mystery following a group of friends, made of climbers and college students as they hike to study a cliff in the middle of a strange forest. 
I really really liked this. The writer did a great job setting up the atmosphere and slowly unraveling the plot and what happened to the characters.  
spoilers ahead 


With great details, the author showed the characters loosing their minds bit by bit, each influenced differently by the strange environment: Dylan's strange bond with the rock wall, Luke's desperation over his dog disappearing and his physical injury, Clay's « visions » first using his tech then afterwards in the forest, Sydney's bafflement toward the geology of the area, etc. You can feel the dread and horror and despair mounting in the characters, as they're stuck in a looping hell, which made this a real page turner.   The valley was portrayed as a true living breathing entity of evil, that entranced and entrapped its visitors. 

I loved the author's description of the evil valley, the absence of noise, the horrible visions, the strange fauna, the glitchy forest ,the blood seeping from everywhere.  I also liked seeing how the evilness was rooted in history, with several flashbacks, showing how the forest grew from its victims.  There was some truly gruesome and gory moments that made me shiver in disgust and sick to my stomach. 
The Dyatlov pass incident's influence was minimal, mostly shown in the state the victims were discovered and the bafflement of the investigators. 

The ending was abrupt in that we didn't know how or why that valley was evil but in retrospect it wasn't a bad decision to not know too much about it, to keep the mystery showing that the valley would continue to exist no matter what. It definitely puts the chills in you.  Some of the character's reactions were a bit bafflingly dumb and the climbing lingo went a bit over my head but this was a very strong debut. 


I'm definitely looking forward to read more books by this author.