Book Review: The Memory Wood

Elissa Mirzoyan is only 13 when she is kidnapped in broad daylight from outside a venue that's hosting a chess tournament she's competing in, and kept in a cellar underground. When she is found by a 12-year-old Elijah, who has only known the woods all his life, he hopes she will be the friend he has never had. Despite Elissa's pleas for help, Elijah is reluctant to let her go, and that's only the start of a twisty game of thrills and chills in Sam Lloyd's accomplished debut The Memory Wood. A nightmarish tale of child abduction and trauma, Lloyd offers a perverse twist of Hansel and Gretel, concocting a complex plot that never loses its immediacy and filling it with a cast of multifaceted characters who are just as interesting. Shocking, sinister and emotional, the atmospheric novel is a riveting page-turner.