The camping trip of nightmares

Oh, this was good. It was creepy and did a lot of hinting around at certain things before whacking you on the face with the facts at the very end. Excellent!

“Dates only make us aware of how numbered our days are, how much closer to death we are for each one we cross off. From now on, Punzel, we’re going to live by the sun and the seasons.’ He picked me up and spun me around, laughing.’Our days will be endless.”

Peggy (known as Punzel for most of the book), has a very strange father named James who has become obsessed with survivalism — thanks in part to his creepy friend Oliver. When Peggy’s piano-playing mother leaves on a business trip, Peggy’s father takes her to Die Hutte — a remote hut in the (Bavarian?) woods that Oliver told him about. Shortly after they arrive, her father tells her that her mother has died, along with the rest of the world, and Punzel and James are the only two people left in the world. They spend eight years on that mountain, until a series of events that leads to a fire — and Punzel’s return to civilization.

Like The Good Girl, the story alternates between Punzel’s time in the woods, and Peggy’s return home. The mystery lies in what happened to get her home. Unlike The Good Girl, the entire story is told from Peggy’s perspective, which I loved. The author strikes a good balance between a naive young girl, and someone old enough to communicate what she’s seeing. It’s really a very well-written book, and I could not put the damn thing down until I finished.