Where Lost Girls Go, by Kody Keplinger

The five girls who have ended up living in the woods with a man they call Sol are not going to be missed by anyone.  They left home or were kicked out long ago.  Each one ended up at the end of their rope in the mountains of Kentucky, and were found and offered a home with young women like themselves.  Sol calls it a "garden" -- a place where the girls are finally treated with kindness.  Yes, there's chores and rules (and food sometimes run low), but there's a roof over their heads and safety.

For Iris, who was kicked out of her home and ended up here when her car died, Sol's cabin is an oasis.  After a year living there, she's eager to prove that she deserves to stay forever.  But to do that, she'll have to pass three trials that Sol hands out to her.  That doesn't bother her at first.  But when a new girl shows up who starts asking questions, Iris begins to wonder why she has to undergo "trials," why all the rules exist, and why they live this way?  And as Iris starts to look around with a critical eye, she finds that the garden has a snake or two.

A creepy story that provides enough tension to keep things interesting.  It certainly could have been made much more disturbing and exploitative, and I'm thankful that the author made an effort largely to stick to implied threats and dangers.  So, while you're on the edge of your seat to see what is going to happen next, things are kept largely PG-rated. 

The personal dynamics are a bit more hit or miss. It's hard in a story like this to convey how brainwashed the characters are and to make their behavior believable.  As outsiders, it's easy to see through Sol's grooming behavior and hard to see why Iris hesitates to leave.  That makes the hesitation and the deliberation a drag on the story's pacing.  But it's also realistic and the author does a good job of drawing distinctions between the behavior of the newer girls and the long-term residents which make the behavior more nuanced.