In Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner, freelance writer Erin Harper returns to the remote Pacific Northwest town of Faraday, Oregon, still haunted by her brother’s long-ago disappearance. Hoping for closure, Erin’s investigation takes a sinister turn when another young woman goes missing—and Erin finds her body in a nearby creek, covered in spores and mushrooms. When the girl’s body mysteriously vanishes from the morgue and her fingerprints surface at a murder scene, Erin and her friends realize they’re facing something far more terrifying than they imagined: a sentient fungal force preying on hikers and residents alike.
The book blends mystery with eco-horror, but for me, the execution fell short. While I enjoyed the chapters told from Erin’s point of view, the sections written from the perspective of the fungal spores felt overly verbose and difficult to follow. The writing style in those sections was stilted and confusing—I often had to reread sentences and still struggled to grasp the meaning.
Additionally, the novel was weighed down by an excessive number of characters, many of whom lacked development or distinct voices. In the unedited ARC version I read, even the author appeared to mix up two characters in a scene. With tighter editing, fewer characters, and more focused storytelling, this could have been a much stronger novel.
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