I do not recall when I specifically first stumbled across the works of Emily Carroll. A dark thumbnail with a splash of red, an innocuous link leading to her website, a whisper across the internet of ominous illustrations telling stories at night. What I do remember is what comic originally grabbed me and shouted YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THIS ILLUSTRATOR. 
 His Face All Red was the comic in question and for months I found myself returning to Emily Carroll's website to read it again. The visuals were so striking, the story so simple, the ending so confusing but in a satisfying way. I wanted to understand the significance in the last panel and come to terms with the fantastical element woven throughout this simple tale. Is the protagonist being crazed by his own guilt? Is the body that of the protagonist or of his brother? What truly happened in the woods? I still don't have the answers but that only elevates the story in my mind. 
 So imagine my delight upon discovering that Emily Carroll was publishing a collection of her work. And in case it wasn't clear, I loved every single page of the collection. 
 Through the Woods contains five separate short illustrated stories, not including an introduction and epilogue. The stories are: Our Neighbor's House, A Lady's Hands Are Cold, My Friend Janna, His Face All Red and The Nesting Place. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of new work included. I was expecting maybe one or two new stories but for the rest to be printed versions of comics already found on her website. But His Face All Red was the only repeat, or at least, the only repeat I was aware of. 
 Every story is creepy and spine-chilling. I'm not saying you'll come out of this reading unable to sleep at night, but Carroll is quite skilled at finding simplicity in horror that the human mind fears and visualizing it on the page. Gore is not overused as a shorthand for unease, instead bright splashes of red will be used to show the implication of violence. This implication only ads to the creep factor, in my opinion. A character will be murdered but you won't see the specifics of said murder, only the implication of it and your mind is left to fill in the blanks. 
 I was very impressed with the design layout for each comic. How the panels are positioned and how much space to designate to each scene is an often overlooked part of comic creation but a poorly designed comic results in a feeling of poor pacing. Through the Woods has a slower pace, reminiscent of that found in campfire tales spoken to small children at night. As such, Carroll makes use of a lot of larger panels and the smaller ones shown in quick succession often repeat a single scene so the reader feels the literal beats passing by. 
 I honestly don't have anything negative to say about this book. I adore the work of Emily Carroll and am thrilled that I now own a portion of her work in print form. I imagine that this will be a book I revisit frequently and copies of the pages within will be printed for me to study as a way to better my own illustration and design skills. If you are at all interested in creepy stories and are a fan of stylistic graphic novels, I HIGHLY recommend Through the Woods. Maybe don't go into it expecting the stories to haunt your nightmares, but I feel that most shouldn't have any problem getting a shiver or two while reading it.