Seventeen-year-old Cara Hughes doesn't have time to believe in monsters.

When Cara's older sister, Shelby, returns home after a year-long disappearance, unable to say what happened or where she went, Cara's family is thrown into turmoil-again. As it is, Cara's barely juggling her job, school, and volunteer work, and she's desperate to be chosen for a corporate internship-something that would guarantee a two-year degree she could never afford without relying on the same loans that left her parents struggling.

At first, Cara is just worried about Shelby's odd behavior and unpredictable moods, then she discovers the body of a teenager, viciously attacked, in the very woods where Shelby vanished. And the teen is just the first victim. Cara clings to the belief that an animal is responsible for the deaths until she realizes she's being stalked by a strange creature in the woods-and it's no animal.

Plagued by strange visions and with her carefully-balanced life falling apart around her, Cara reaches out to the only person who can help her, Lucas Powell, a self-proclaimed monster hunter. His theories are outrageous, and Cara hopes her decision to trust him isn't a mistake, but the only way to know is by putting his theories to the test. Cara must face the woods herself, where the creatures she's tried so hard to deny lurk in the dark.