Middle of the Night
A Novel
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4.1 • 611 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
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 ghosts 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Riley Sager knows how to deliver a gripping psychological thriller—and this time, he tops himself. In Middle of the Night, Sager adds a hit of ’90s childhood nostalgia, evoking an eerie suburban-nightmare atmosphere that’s equal parts Stephen King and Steven Spielberg. Seriously, it’s that good. On a hot New Jersey night in the summer of 1994, 10-year-old best friends Ethan and Billy camped out in Ethan’s backyard. In the morning, their tent was found sliced open, and Billy was gone. Forever. Thirty years later, an insomnia-plagued Ethan is back on his childhood cul-de-sac, and strange things seem to be happening around him. Sager cleverly builds the emotional tension by telling the story through multiple viewpoints that shift back and forth between 1994 and the present to gradually reveal what happened that night. This is a deliciously creepy, under-the-covers kind of read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Sager (The Only One Left) expertly doles out chills and pathos in his mesmerizing latest. In 1994, when Ethan Marsh was 10 years old, his best friend, Billy Barringer, was kidnapped from the tent where both boys were sleeping in Ethan's New Jersey backyard and never seen again. Thirty years later, Ethan's marriage has ended, his parents have decamped to Florida, and he's returned to live on the well-to-do cul-de-sac where he grew up. Still plagued by nightmares about Billy's disappearance, Ethan comes to believe that someone may be lurking in the shadows of Hemlock Circle: neighbors' motion-sensor lights flick on for no apparent reason; he senses a presence "linger in the way certain smells do" when he's out for night walks. His paranoia increases when someone tosses a baseball into his yard, the private signal Billy used to give him when he wanted to play. Could Billy have returned? Or is his kidnapper back for seconds? Sager takes his time ratcheting up the tension, peppering in crucial flashbacks that flesh out Ethan and Billy's friendship and painting a three-dimensional portrait of Ethan's fractured mind in the present. This standout work of psychological suspense confirms that Sager has few equals when it comes to merging creepiness and compassion.
Customer Reviews
I’m in between 4 & 5 stars here!!
I guess I just wish there was more atmosphere than just a culdesac, backyard, and the woods.
But it was good! And SO creepy!
Meh
It wasn’t captivating and the there weren’t any twists or turns. Characters are okay. I finished it but I won’t remember anything about this book a week from now.
Sager does it again
Deeply engrossing tale of loss and grief. A mystery of what happened to a boy for 30 years after he disappeared from his friends front yard. A gripping tale of mystery that also looks into the fragility of friendship and regret.