Doe by Rebecca Barrow
Maris Larsen will do anything to keep the top spot on her high school’s cheerleading squad…including making a deal with the sinister creature in the woods behind her house.
After sleepwalking into the woods behind her home one night, Maris meets Doe, a decades-old creature that presents itself to Maris as a deer. Doe is trapped in her deer form, cursed to wander the woods for eternity after the only girls who could free her died in a fire…until Doe realizes that Maris has the power to free her, with only a small sacrifice needed on Maris’s part.
Back at school, Maris is facing a challenge to her spot as head cheerleader from the new girl, Genevieve Ray. Her coach and teammates are quickly switching their allegiance from Maris to Genevieve. Yet, Maris is determined to stop Genevieve’s momentum at all costs. Cheerleading is one of the only things that Maris has going for her, especially since the girl she’s in love with isn’t interested in anything serious.
Maris and Genevieve become quick rivals, though Genevieve seems to be outmatching Maris at every turn. Worse for Maris, there’s nothing she can do about it. Genevieve has the kind of money and privilege that Maris can only dream about, which only fuels the fire of their rivalry. With the team coming apart at the seams, the rest of the girls beg Maris and Genevieve to make amends with each other for the good of the team and their season. It’s at a party one night that Maris spots Genevieve and decides to extend an olive branch…but Genevieve has no idea whether to trust her rival. They end up venturing into the woods together, just the two of them…or so Genevieve, who doesn’t know about Doe, thinks.
A massive storm and mudslide trap Maris and Genevieve in the woods overnight. The next morning, their teammates, upon locating them in the woods, find Genevieve dead and Maris nearly so. Maris is rushed to the hospital and miraculously survives. Most of the girls are relieved that Maris makes a full recovery, but some are suspicious that the Maris who left those woods isn’t the same one they know and love. Most of them chalk it up to seeing Genevieve die, but others suspect something more disturbing happened to Maris that night…and they don’t know why she won’t tell them about it.
Only Maris and the creature in the woods know what really happened that night. With both the girl and the ghost stopping at nothing to get what they want, whose story will ultimately be told?
Rebecca Barrow has been a favorite author of mine over the years.That, combined with the haunting, visceral cover, made this an automatic pick for my TBR. I went into this book without reading the synopsis, so I was surprised to find that the novel is in verse. This structure took a minute to settle into, but it gave the novel an exciting, fast-paced, eerie feeling that only enhanced the story. I read this over a couple of sittings, and the book lends itself to a quick reading experience.
Barrow immerses readers in the story with a completeness that would be delightful if it weren’t so deeply unsettling. The entity that is Doe consumes the story, much like she consumes characters in the novel. There’s just something so deeply creepy about a specter of a deer, empty and decaying, running alone through the forest at night. It feels realistic in a way that makes the story even more eerie and upsetting. I would highly recommend this book to fans of YA horror, especially novels that are tinged with the supernatural, like HOUSE OF HOLLOW and THE HOUSE OF QUIET!
DOE by Rebecca Barrow was published on June 23, 2026 by Nancy Paulsen Books
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