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Genre: Horror, Mystery/Thriller
In one of my more epic Bad Decisions Book Club moments I decided to read The Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay (the author that scared Stephen King) immediately before my husband left town for a week. Cue me lying in bed in a cold sweat, sleep deprived, paralyzed with fear because I can smell the rotten stench of zombies, only it turns out to be Dewey’s fetid “salmon and chicken entree” breath, and he’s panicking too because Rich is the Morning Food Servant and if he’s gone then CLEARLY DEWEY WILL NEVER EAT BREAKFAST AGAIN.
It was a rough week for both of us.
I think The Disappearance at Devil’s Rock really qualifies more as a psychological thriller than a horror novel–the element of terror in this book isn’t a known quantity. There’s no monster. Instead Tremblay skillfully uncoils layers of dread, forcing the characters and the reader to fear what they glimpse of the corner of their eye and to question their sanity.
The conflict is based around the disappearance of a child, 13-year-old Tommy Sanderson. Tommy and his friends, Josh and Luis, wander into Borderlands State Park one summer night. Luis and Josh come back out; Tommy does not. The book opens at the phone call to Tommy’s mother, Elizabeth, informing her that her son is missing, and follows the events of the next several days.
On one level, this book operates really well as a standard mystery. Why were the boys in the park at night? Was it normal teenage boy shenanigans and bad judgment? What happened to Tommy? Is he lost? Hurt? Abducted? Is he still haunted by his own father’s vanishing act and tragic death?
As Elizabeth struggles to cope with Tommy’s disappearance, she starts feeling the presence of the supernatural in her home. For a moment she sees–very clearly–what appears to be Tommy (a very unwell, ghastly shadow Tommy) in the corner and she swears she can smell his scent. Then pages from Tommy’s so-far-unfound diary start appearing in the middle of the living room floor at night. Elizabeth even purchases a security camera to find out who is leaving the pages–but never sees it happen.
Tommy’s diary hints at a secret that he, Josh, and Luis were hiding. As Elizabeth (and the reader) get more pages a sense of dread becomes more profound.
Then there’s the drawing. I don’t even want to talk about the drawing.
To turn the creepiness factor full up to eleven, people around town (including Tommy’s friends) report someone peering into their windows at night.
One of the things that surprised me about this book was that there are legitimate BOO! moments in it, which I haven’t actually experienced in a book before. I found myself startled, deeply creeped out, closing the book then opening it again–kind of wanting to look but also not wanting to.
I don’t want to reveal too much about the plot because it unravels itself so well, but I will say that there are two layers to this book. There is the THING that happened, that leads to Tommy’s disappearance, the THING that Josh and Luis won’t talk about. And it’s horrible. It’s genuinely, heartbreakingly awful. It’s also very real.
Then there’s the supernatural, the questions about Elizabeth is seeing and not seeing. Both of these elements would work superbly on their own, and both would be scary as shit. Put together it’s like a twist-cone of delicious scariness.
If you are trying to gauge, “how scary is this, and can I read it?” I’ll do my best to help you. The book isn’t gory, although there is a moment of violence, and I wouldn’t recommend for people who can’t handle violence of any kind. It made me jump a couple of times, but it’s not pee-your-pants scary. It’s not a monster novel. It’s a book about a bad thing that might really happen and some scary shit that you aren’t sure happened but either way none of it is good. It’s a book that makes you lie awake at night listening for sounds.
Again, I wish I could talk about the plot more in depth to explain just how well done all of this is, but the best I can do is a series of vague hand gestures and excited noises. If you’re cool with scary mysteries, you’ll be cool with this. If not, probably best to stay away.
Regardless, The Disappearance at Devil’s Rock is one of my favorite books of the summer. It’s smart, and frightening, and wonderfully written. It’s also keeping me from getting a good night’s sleep and probably putting my barista at Starbucks through college.
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Sounds like it has a little bit of a Stranger Things vibe. Can’t wait to read it!
The only reason I haven’t read this yet is because I read another novel of his (“Head Full of Ghosts”), and this is how that panned out for me.
Me: *finishes book* What a clever take on ghost stories, possession, reality TV, and memory! Excellent novel, sir, I will write a review on Goodreads.
Me: *sitting bolt upright in bed at midnight while husband and cats snore peacefully* There’s no such thing as ghosts. No such thing. I swear to God there’s something downstairs, and did the curtains always move like that?…
…so maaaaaaybe I’ll wait until a bright and sunny cheerful day before taking this book on. And have a Georgette Heyer or Terry Pratchett on hand as an antidote.
Is any of the bad stuff sexual violence? This sounds right up my alley but I am so very tired of SV and really just don’t want to add any more of it to my mind’s imagery.
I remember trying to read Head Full of Ghosts and having a hard time wrapping my head around the prose… I don’t know why. It’s entirely possible I was just trying to read it at a time when I couldn’t concentrate on it, but I kept having to re-read sentences and found the narration weirdly slippery, so I had to give it up in the first chapter. I’ll give him another try since this sounds great.
This looks amazing. Just what I am in the mood for as the dead end of summer turns into fall.
I am kind of scared to try it, though. I get sad and terrified reading books about missing kids. I spend the whole book worrying about something bad happening to my daughter someday, and it’s never a great experience.n Still…
*flails about indecisively*
I don’t know how to be decisive here either. I’ve known about this book for a bit, but I read Head Full of Ghosts and found it very unnerving. Well-written, but man, it does not leave you in a good place. Maybe October, when my brain feels ready for the scary.
I have very mixed feelings about novels of this kind. Obviously you are trying not to give away major plot points. The chief question for me would be, is the mystery actually solved, or is the reader left hanging with “what just happened?” chasing around her brain. The secondary question is “do I like these characters enough to care?”
I appreciate good writing, in whatever genre; but as someone who grew up reading mystery novels, I need a resolution. And if the protagonist(s) is/are not likable, sympathetic characters, even a good resolution won’t make me happy. “What is real” questions don’t excite me, they annoy me, so mixing that in just makes the other two factors more important – they would need to outweigh it.
tl;dr = probably nope.
@TraceyC no sexual violence or assault (I call that out specifically for trigger warning)
@chacha1 yes you do get an answer to the mystery
WANT!
OKAY OKAY THIS BOOK WAS AWESOME BUT
THE SHADOWS. AND THAT DRAWING MADE ME SCREAM (in suprise? terror? Who knows?)
It will seriously get under your skin.
Oh man, I am also conflicted! This sounds soooo good but I am also a giant scaredy-cat.
Yikes, $12.99, Hoping it will show up at the library.
I finished this book on a night we had the a/c off and windows open. Wellll I had to start a nice romance afterwards and read for an hour so I could go to bed!
I have Head Full of Ghosts in my TBR pile, so maybe I’ll start with that one to see what my tolerance level is before I shell out $12.99 for a book I’m too scared to finish.
When you talked about Tommy going missing in a state park, I immediately thought about the conspiracy theorist people who talk about all the disappearances from national parks. I think there are rational explanations for most/all of those, but that still creeps me out.
So a couple years ago reading World War Z in the night, I had to come upstairs and lock myself in the bathroom to finish it. Could not continue downstairs by myself with really big picture windows, and hubby was sleeping and had to get up early, so not in bed. I had to be as close to him as possible and yet anywhere else would be too alone for when the zombies came, so yes, I read the finally half of WWZ sitting on my bathroom floor.
And the next day when a bird hit the window while I was typing on the computer, I almost flipped over the table in fear. I truly had an instant where I believed I would look up and see a zombie.
Is this scarier? If so, I can’t even.
Cripes, I just read this review late at night and even that’s freaking me out. Don’t know if I could handle the book itself.
This review makes me want to read the book and also makes me want to never ever go near the book. Ahhh! I am so tempted and I just get so scared when I read such books. I read this one called Salem’s lot by Stephen King. That also had a small boy to whom bad things happen. Super creepy but I just couldn’t put the book down. This book sounds similar and it is just too hard to resist.
I have to say, I was super excited about this book because the plot gave me Stranger Things vibes (which is one of my latest Netflix obsessions) but ended up extremely disappointed. Should have read your review first. I was prepared for the creepy and the supernatural and the mystery… I was not prepared the supremely disturbing and realistic turn the story took. Just for the record, I love scary books (I might be Stephen King’s biggest/most stalker-ish fan) and I don’t mind disturbing elements, but I do tend to stay away from ripped-from-the-headlines level of disturbing (especially when it involves kids), simply because it’s too real and makes me feel icky and doesn’t better my life. From the summaries I’d read and the first half of the book, I had no reason to think that’s what this story would turn into. And then it did. There are a few images that I honestly don’t think I’ll ever get out of my head. If you can’t watch things like Criminal Minds or SVU because it’s too real, then you probably shouldn’t read this. It’s not the haunting, sleep-with-the-lights-on ghost story I went in expecting.