Book 8 finished! I am really trying to read other books but these books keep calling my name! This was a little slower start than the previous books but it soon picks up speed and once again, I had to read until I finished it! Tom Campbell is camping with his girlfriend when he wakes up in the middle of the woods, nowhere near their tent, and he hears the word, "Run". I still have three more of the DI Helen Grace books left to read. Once again, I am going to try to read something different, we'll see if I'm successful! ( )

I like this series, hope there'll be more ( )

OK book, however, I did figure out who the baddie was and the motive quite early one. Also, the new guy on the team and his fascinating with Grace didn't rock my boat. I enjoyed listening to the book, but so far this is one of the weakest books in the series. The narrator did a good job, and absolutely the book is well worth reading (or listening). I just wanted a more surprising story.

On a side note, adding a Swedish character to the story and claiming that the person did not understand English? Sorry, but English is our second language and we start learning it very early on in school. And yes, this caused me to call my mom and rant about it during work... ;) ( )

What I love about M.J. Arlidge's Helen Grace series is that I usually have no idea who the bad guy is. There are always red herrings, and even though I know they're red herrings, Arlidge still fools me. "Down to the Woods" had me guessing all the way until Helen and her cohorts figured it out.

I'm not going to do a plot summary here, because you can read that on your own. I'm just going to give my take on what I thought about the book as a whole.

The reason I did not rate thsi book 5 stars is that I found it slow to get going. The initial suspect seemed so boring that I wasn't interested in what was going on, and that was frustrating. Once the pace picked up, the book really took off and grabbed my attention, but that didn't happen until a good 1/3 of the way through the book. This was so unlike Arlidge that I wondered if his writing was weakening. (It's a rare author who can keep up the strength of a good series after so many books, and this series has been rock solid thus far.) Fortunately, once the book picked up, Arlidge was in fine form. I'm not sure why it was so slow at the beginning.

I like the new member of Helen's team, DS Hudson. We aren't allowed much into his psyche or past, so I'm eager to learn more about him in future books. I look forward to reading book #9! ( )

Excellent series. Looking forward to whenever the next book in the series comes out. Love reading about Helen Grace and her team. Great characters ( )