I'm an Emily Barr fan like many others and I was delighted to be given the opportunity to read her latest novel "The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods". This was a fabulous read and although this one was quite different to her other books, I certainly wasn't disappointed!

The author executed a fascinating premise really wonderfully for me. I was fully engaged the whole time and felt a great emotional connection to the characters. The creativity of this story was also apparent in its structure, as it was told from two perspectives - the 'then' and 'now'. I loved this split of perspectives and chapters because it helped to keep my interest. I was very curious to see how the two different threads would be linked and I did not expect what eventually came to light at all, This great story was so well written by Emily Barr and it flowed beautifully.

The characters were all very different, each with alternative intentions. Emily Barr has cleverly written the novel in a way that made me doubt everyone and I was convinced that those who I thought were good, actually were anything but.  

I loved the delightful plot twists and the fabulously fulfilling ending. Overall, this book was very light and easy to read, but also touched on some sensitive topics. Emily Barr has written a fantastic book and I think this is a book not to be missed. 

I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel, at my own request, from Penguin Random House UK  via NetGalley. This review is my own unbiased opinion.

I thought this had a really interesting concept when I read the synopsis on Netgalley so I immediately put in a request and was lucky enough to be approved. I have a weird fascination with cults and similar kinds of groups who live seperate from the rest of society so I was interested to see how this story would play out.

There are two distinct sections to the books, one part takes place in the present and follows Arty as she leaves her commune and enters into the 'real world' and her attempts to contact family on the outside. The second sections are interwoven with the main narrative and we get glimpses of someone being held prisoner in a basement and their attempts to escape. These parts, whilst short, really did have me on tenterhooks as I was constantly theorising on how someone ended up in the basement and who was it that was keeping them captive and why. There were times when it got a little confusing and I did end up wondering how it was going to link up with the main story and in the end it didn't really add much to the plot other then setting up the 'big twist'.  

The main character Arty was intelligent and inquisitive, she's very headstrong and intuitive for someone who has spent her entire life living in the woods. It did actually make me quite anxious reading about her trying to find her way around Mumbai cause I was so scared that someone was going to take advantage of her. She was an interesting character and I did enjoy reading about her journey and about her discovering how the modern world works.

The couple of problems I had about this book centered around the fact that this was marketed as a thriller and I just didn't get that feeling from the book. This felt more like a coming-of-age story and it was a good one but I was disappointed that I didn't get the thriller I was hoping for. I guess the parts of the book set within the basement were supposed to be the thrilling part but the big twist at the end didn't fulfill my hopes for how the plot was going to go. I also wasn't a big fan of the ending, I thought one of the characters being reintroduced wasn't necessary or believable and it definitely lessened my positive feelings about the book slightly.

Overall, I think this book had really strong writing and a main character that you root for but the twist at the end was disappointing and didn't fit with the book being marketed as a thriller in my opinion. I wanted something darker but got an ending that was tied up in a neat little bow instead.

I absolutely loved the idea within this book. I know that I for one sometimes would like nothing more than a haven away from the world! However, this book shows that the modern world has a habit of catching up with you no matter how isolated you believe yourself to be.

Told from the perspective of 16 year old Artemis, a girl both intelligent but naive and her struggles as her whole life is turned completely upside down. The chapters a interwoven beautifully with an intense account that leaves you guessing and on the edge of your seat! Barr is brilliant at keeping her audience gripped and only drip feeding hints until the very end!

A very intriguing premise for a novel. Told from the perspectives of Arty, a teenager who lives in a secluded matriarchal community and a mysterious figure who is being held captive at an unknown point in time. Arty is forced by circumstances to leave her idyllic community and seek her way in the world. I absolutely loved the way the author describes the way that Arty sees and deals with the outside world and it makes the reader think about things that we take for granted such as using phones and social networking. She meets some interesting people on her journey and both her plot and the mystery of the person in captivity keeps the reader gripped. I read this on Pigeonhole and it kept everyone guessing right up until the end. Highly recommended YA, this is not a genre I read often but it is the type of book anyone would enjoy.

This is such an incredible book. Completely not what I had expected. is an incredible book. I read it in the span of two days, often unwilling to to put it down even for a moment. The characterisation was well written, all the characters fit into the story and do something that furthers the plot. Arty is definitely my favourite character. Her story is inspiring and at times heartbreakingly sad, sometimes funny and other times it keeps you on the edge of your seat wanting to shield her from the crazy world of this book. The author manages to create one of the most realistic characters I have ever read about. Arty is unrealistically human and bears true struggles that I think a lot of people may relate to. 

There's an underlying message about the heroic strength of women- this is represented by Arty herself, and the women who raised her including her own mother, her grandmother, and all the women we get to meet. 

Truly a beautiful, enjoyable read that I will be sharing to everyone that I meet.

4 stars. 

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House UK Children’s Penguin for an advanced reader's copy of 'The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods' by Emily Barr

Arty grows up in a small community in a Indian forest free  from interference from "the world" until one day she has to leave with her younger brother to find help. 

I wanted to give up this book, only a few pages in,  I still wanted to give it up at 10 and 15% through.  However, I am so glad I didn't.  I found it difficult at first to get to grips with  the two narratives, the second narrative being so short each time just led t me bewildered.  However the author has used that brevity to great effect and brought two timelines together seamlessly.  The writing at times seemed a little naive but overall it worked. and fits with the genre of Young Adult which is I suspect its rightful home.

The characterisation was very well done both of Arty and of the people  she meets as she leaves the forest.  The author has captured the spirit of her re-emergence into society and how she deals with the modern times

I absolutely loved this book. What a talent Emily Barr has for creating flawed but endearing and fascinating characters. I was right behind Arty all the way through her amazing physical and emotional journey. The parallel story line in the different timeline created a great atmosphere of suspense. All in all an absolute triumph.

This is an unusual tale of a young girl named Artemis who has grown up in a tiny matriarchal commune in the woods of India, not far from Mumbai. All Arty has ever known is her small family group who all have the names of Gods and Goddesses, and who have shunned the real world in order to go back to basics. Having been brought up this way, in a sheltered community where just once a year at Kotta they get Kingfisher beer and Dairy Milk, Arty is wonderfully naïve. However, when a tragic situation occurs, Arty is forced out of the woods to try and get help, and once the secret of her life is out, it’s out. She’s all over social media as the girl who came out of the woods. Events spiral quickly, and Arty sets out to find a woman called Tania, who used to be part of the commune, and who is in contact with Arty’s Mum’s family, back home in Britain.  

With such a sheltered upbringing, it’s not surprising that Arty comes into contact with the world outside the woods and doesn’t like what she finds. She trusts everyone at first, then suddenly realises that not everyone is what they claim to be. However she’s smart, determined and resourceful, so can she evade capture from the authorities even with her face plastered all over Facebook and Twitter? 

This is a thought-provoking book. It makes you think about how in many ways people are defined by their upbringing, and how difficult it can be to step outside your reality, and face a new one. 

I would like to thank the publishers, the author, Netgalley and the Pigeonhole for the opportunity to read this book for free; this is my honest and unbiased review. 

3.5/5

I haven’t read any of Emily Barr’s books before now, but I did find her writing style easy.  The storyline moved along fairly quickly, but I did find that the way in which Arty adjusted so quickly to the outside world when she had to leave the shelter of her small isolated community, was rather unbelievable. Overall, the reveal of who was in the cellar was a surprise, which is always good and there was a nice satisfying ending, but I think it is a YA book and I might be a little old to find it really was my ‘thing’.

Arty has spent her whole life in the clearing, with her British mum, Indian dad, and the rest of their international community. They've shunned the outside world, choosing to live without money, without social media, without the war and drugs and evil that Arty believes fills the outside world. She is perfectly happy where she is, thank you very much. 

Until one day, she has to leave. 

Now, I have to admit, despite the YA tag I was expecting something quite dark and sinister. And yes, there is an element of this book that seems to be like that (I won't say too much because of spoilers). But the reality is, this is actually a book about a girl who has to come to term with living in our world. A noisy world, where not everyone can be trusted, and there are new experiences around every corner.

As a character, I loved Arty. She had real spirit, and I thought her experiences and the way she comes to understand the world were very well written. The suspense element of the novel didn't really work for me personally - the alternative chapters almost felt like reading from two different books, and I think that mystery of it could have been framed slightly better. Also, the ending felt sort of like a cop out, but that might just be me.

But overall, I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed reading about the community, and how it came to be. The descriptions of India were beautiful, and reading about how Arty had to adjust to our world was fascinating. But for me, all in all, it was ok. Not great, not awful, just good. 

Disclaimer: I was provided with a copy of this book by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This has not influenced this review, and all opinions are honest and my own.

Arty has lived in The Clearing her whole life with 11 other people, when tragedy strikes Arty has to leave The Clearing an make her way into a world she has never been to before, only read about in books. 
An emotionally charged book that I have immensely enjoyed

This is the second book that I've read recently that I was putting off because of low ratings but it is absolutely brilliant. 

Arty, who is 16, lives in 'the clearing' which is situated in the woods in India. It is a small community made up of eleven people. She knows nothing of the outside world, except for what her mother told her and what she's read in books. When lots of members of the clearing fall ill, some dying, she and her younger brother Zeus must venture out into the real world (or "the Wasteland", as they call it) to find medical help. 

She is soon thrown into a whole new world of electricity and social media and money which is "the root of all evil". The story is told in two parts, Artemis' (Arty) point of view and an unknown point of view but both unwind an  tangle together and it's such a lovely story which really makes you think.

A clever twist, a thought-provoking view on the modern world, a dash of feminism is what makes The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods an enjoyable read, if a tad repetitive at times (but that seems to be the author's MO, see The One Memory of Flora Banks).

Loved this book. Kept me reading from page 1 until the end, couldn't put it down. 
Loved the story the way it went the twists and turns and finding out about her life, what happened. 
Loved the characters the good and the bad.

16 year old Artemis (Arty) lives in a small commune in an Indian forest. She has never known a different life, but is aware of the outside world through the carefully chosen books which she and the other children in the group are allowed to read. This tight knit group of seven adults and four children lives a very loving and peaceful existence which is shattered suddenly and violently by a tragic event which forces Arty out into the real world.

Emily Barr’s love of travel and gap-year backpacking (a staple of her early books) has been developed into a ‘what happened next’ scenario courtesy of Arty’s mother Venus (nee Victoria Jones) who fell in love with India when she travelled there in her youth to escape a troubled home life, and started the commune as a way of escaping from the harsh realities of life back in 90s Britain.

This is a sweet and thoughtful Young Adult read with a very engaging central character. I’m not sure I was totally convinced by how relatively worldly and confident became Arty as soon as she was out in the real world, but that slight niggle aside I really enjoyed the book. It deals with some pretty gritty topics (Arty’s chapters are interspersed with the account of an unnamed person who is being held captive in a basement, and the identity of this person is only revealed towards the end of the book) but at the heart of the story is an innocent girl unsullied by our cynical and mercenary society, and I found Arty’s story an engaging and uplifting read.

Great book.  I really invested in the character of Arty and was rooting for her throughout.  Well written and a real page turner.

I hadn’t read anything by Emily Barr before but I was drawn into this book on the strength of the concept and I wasn’t disappointed.   The twists and turns of Arty’s journey were riveting as was her approach to the upheaval in her idyllic life.  It was a joy to have such strong female characters sprinkled through the pages.   On the strength of the quality of the writing, I will definitely track down more books by this author.

This book was not my usual genre but I thoroughly enjoyed it. 
The twists and turns were surprising with a great ending. A great book with a few surprises. Highly recommend a read

I greatly enjoyed Emily Barr’s first two young adult novels, and was keen to see what worlds and characters she would introduce us to next. Past books by the author had prepared me for the possibility that narrators, and, indeed, less central characters might be unreliable, and so I took the first person sections with a pinch of salt, even as I tried to figure out whose story they were telling and how that person and story was related to the characters and story of the third person narrative that dominated the book as a whole.

Artemis Jones – Arty – was born in a clearing of an Indian forest, the first of four children born to an experimental community who avoid contact with the outside world as much as possible, and communicate with it only through one adult who ventures beyond the forest to trade for goods they can’t grow or make themselves. Although they have different parents, Arty regards the younger children as her brothers and sisters and takes care of them when the adults are busy, as well as looking after the community’s small library and doing the laundry. When a sudden disease strikes down all those around her, Arty, now sixteen, takes her one surviving brother with her to seek help from the people living beyond the forest.

Although she speaks three languages and has read about the outside world in her books, Arty finds even the smallest village to be a loud and fast-moving place. She is further alarmed when she, her brother, and the first two people to help them are immediately quarantined upon reporting her situation to the authorities. Once released from hospital and placed in the care of temporary foster parents, Arty learns that she and her brother have separate families in France and England respectively – and they are now social media celebrities, thanks to one of her would-be rescuers posting her story all over the internet.

When, after a series of adventures, Arty – now separated from her brother – is reunited with the grandparents she never previously met, her one thought is that her mother told her to avoid the cellar. And we know that the cellar is or was the improvised prison of our unknown first person narrator, whose most telling other connection to Arty is a distinctive teddy bear. As is the way of fairy tale heroines, Arty is unable to resist looking in the cellar, and deeply hidden family secrets are revealed, although new mysteries also open up to her.

I loved Arty, and also her adventures for the most part. I found some of the revelations connected to the cellar to be anticlimactic after the big buildup of the early chapters, and the ending was a little too sugar-coated for my liking. On the other hand, some of Arty’s attempts to interact with a world she didn’t fully understand made me smile, and I enjoyed the commentary on the influence of social media and celebrity from those who refused to engage with it, as well as from those who were deeply immersed in it. Not my favourite of the author’s books, but a treat nonetheless.

Arty has always lived in the Clearing, a small settlement in the forests of south India. But their happy life, hidden from the rest of the world, is shattered by a terrible accident. For the first time in her sixteen years, Arty must leave the only place she's ever known, into the outside world she's been taught to fear.

The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods has such an interesting premise, following a young girl who has grown up in a secluded utopia far away from the sins of capitalism, war and patriarchy. In her sixteen years alive, Arty has only met ten other people. However, Arty is soon jolted out of her idyllic childhood as she is forced to leave her commune to the outside 'Wastelands' to find help for her family. I really enjoyed her perspective as an innocent and sheltered young woman coming face-to-face for the first time with many of the twenty-first century excesses that is today's world. Many of her thoughts on such timely topics are insightful and effective, providing an interesting social commentary to the novel. While her voice came across as quite child-like and naive, at points, she also displays a great deal of emotional strength and intelligence as she proves resourceful in an alien world. Barr has crafted a very compelling protagonist as she feels so grounded and, despite her extraordinary circumstances, like a real teenage girl. 

This novel has been billed as a thriller, much like the rest of Barr's publications, which I think is somewhat a misnomer. The majority of the novel follows a young woman recovering from trauma and does not hold many of the usual characteristics and tropes of a genre novel. Much of the suspense or mystery in the novel relates to the two different timelines present in the novel: one in the present day from Arty's perspective interspersed with a mysterious first person narrative in which someone is being held captive in a room. I am not typically a fan of such devices as I often feel that they are quite gimmicky but the plot twist is powerful and used effectively, complimenting the main narrative perfectly. It was honestly cleverly done and did not feel cheap at all. 

On the whole, I really enjoyed this novel, and found it a moving coming of age tale of an extraordinary young woman.