The Boy in the Black Wood (Banktoun Book 1) cover art

The Boy in the Black Wood (Banktoun Book 1)

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About this listen

She survived once. This time, the town might not.

Jo thought Banktoun had finally made her invisible. Working in a quiet bookshop, seeing familiar faces, letting days pass without surprise. Then Gareth Maloney walks through her door – and the past she’s spent years trying not to name steps right in after him.

She knows him. And she knows what happened the night he attacked her and her friend Claire, leaving Claire paralysed and Jo trapped in a life sentence of guilt.

Jo turns to Sergeant Davie Gray, the local policeman who’s always sworn he’d protect her, but he won’t take her seriously. Worse, while Jo’s being dismissed as damaged and paranoid, a masked man starts stalking girls on the old railway track.

Jo is done asking for permission to be believed. If Maloney’s back for a reason, she’ll find out what it is. Because in a small town, secrets don’t stay buried. They rot. And when Jo starts digging, someone decides she’s the next problem to be dealt with.

Note: Previously published as Black Wood.

©2015 Susi Holliday (P)2026 Susi Holliday Psychological Suspense Thriller & Suspense
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Listener received this title free

I've read several books by Susi Holliday so had high hopes for this one. The opening chapter totally grabbed me but for the next few chapters I felt a bit confused about which characters POV I was listening to especially with the different timelines, and I didn't really start to enjoy it until about halfway through. I did love the small town setting where everyone knows everyone else, and I really really wanted to know just what happened in those dark creepy woods. But unfortunately I was disappointed by the ending, which seemed rushed.

The book is read by one of my favourite narrators, Angus King, and as usual he did a great job. But I can't help feeling a female narrator would have been better for this book as the two main characters are female.

A bit disappointing

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Listener received this title free

When I first started listening to this I didn’t realise I had already read it a few years ago. I think the reason being that I did not read it with a “Scottish” accent. It was I think Chapter five before it was mentioned that the book was set in Scotland. Being deaf I struggle with accents and this made the audio book more difficult for me to listen to.

Listening to the book did not majorly change my view of the book from those years ago. I still found there were a lot of characters and it took a good while to work out who they all were and how they were involved. There were, in my opinion, no redeeming features of any of the characters, they were all very unlikeable. However I do feel that some of the characters could have been developed more.

There story was slow to get going but did improve although the “twist” was no surprise to me

I believe this was the author’s debut novel and I’m please to say her books have greatly improved in my opinion and I will listen to and/read the other two in the series.

Good story

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