Synopsis
In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.
The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.
Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?
The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.
The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.
Review
Thank you so much to the kind folks over at Dutton and NetGalley for the eARC!
Riley Sager has long been an auto-buy author for me in the thriller genre delivering enthralling titles such as last summer’s, The Only One Left, and my personal favorite, Home Before Dark. With seven previous works under his belt, each year holds the anticipation of a new Sager novel, something I constantly look forward to with keen excitement. This year is no exception with the upcoming release of his suburban thriller, Middle of the Night, a novel in which my hype may have sullied my reading experience.
The synopsis of Middle of the Night seems straight-forward enough; two young boys camp in their backyard one summer night only for one of them to go missing. With the case unsolved, the remaining boy, Ethan, is plagued by the loss of his best friend, especially since returning to the same neighborhood in which this tragedy occurred thirty years later. Naturally, weird things start happening again, and Ethan feels highly motivated to find out what really happened that night. There are a few set pieces that drape this story in intrigue such as a mysterious institute, foggy memories, and eerie woods. These are all typical hallmarks of a Sager thriller in which expectations are normally subverted even heightening the already mysterious. Unfortunately, I can’t say this is true of Middle of the Night.
I want to start by saying in no way is Middle of the Night a bad book. It’s another honest thriller that Sager can add to his growing list of works that does the job just fine. However, following the release of a book such as The Only One Left, I held extremely high creative expectations for Middle of the Night, a book that takes on the very well-established suburban thriller trope. I was sincerely hoping this sub-genre would be flipped on its head and a new, exciting twist would emerge; sadly, I predicted about 80% of the ending within the first few chapters.
Aside from following typical patterns, Ethan’s character and the pacing of this novel gave me immense pause. Ethan is a man who is completely defined by his trauma, something that we’ve seen time and time again in these types of stories. Of course, we can empathize with him for the immense loss he has suffered from an early age, and like him, we want to know the truth. Aside from his chronic insomnia and survivor’s guilt, I really can’t comment much more on his character. He’s a fine guy, all in all, a normal kid as we see in the flashback chapters, but again, nothing that really demands attention. This perhaps works hand in hand with the pacing issue in which we spend most of this novel in Ethan’s head repeatedly addressing his insurmountable guilt and lack of memory of that fateful night. I do understand these feelings of frustration and grief needed to be established for Ethan in earnest, but I also feel as though this was an overwritten facet of his character that ultimately slowed the story down.
Conversely, Middle of the Night succeeds through Sager’s classic, tight writing in moments of tremendous suspense and possible danger. In both genres of horror and thriller combined, I haven’t come across many authors who can instill the sense of genuine fear that Sager can in these concise, momentary scenes of unease. We see this specifically in this novel when Ethan begins to notice strange occurrences around the neighborhood only in (you guessed it) the middle of the night. While short in duration, these moments lend plenty of credence to increasing the overall feeling of suspense throughout the whole novel. Truthfully, this kind of writing is the reason I will read any book Sager publishes.
Middle of the Night is another solid thriller from Sager that is probably best suited for newcomers to the thriller genre. Many of the plot points of this story felt easily predictable, but this is coming from someone who has read more than her share of the genre. Riley Sager still manages to execute a few twists and delivers excellent moments of the tightest kind of suspense to keep this slow-burn plot trucking along. If you’re looking to introduce someone to the world of thrillers, Middle of the Night is the ideal novel that soundly executes mystery, tension, and uncertainty.
Middle of the Night releases on June 18th from Dutton.
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