The Cabin at the End of the World
A Novel
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3.6 • 762 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Paul Tremblay’s terrifying twist to the home invasion novel—inspiration for the upcoming major motion picture from Universal Pictures
“Tremblay’s personal best. It’s that good.” — Stephen King
Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.
One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen, but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, “None of what’s going to happen is your fault.” Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls out: “Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world.”
Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined. The Cabin at the End of the World is a masterpiece of terror and suspense from the fantastically fertile imagination of Paul Tremblay.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Be prepared to stay up reading way past your bedtime. Paul Tremblay’s home invasion thriller is one you won’t forget anytime soon—not just because it’s incredibly dark and violent, but because it’s chillingly believable. Two dads are relaxing at their vacation rental with their daughter when four strangers appear at their door with medieval-looking weapons. The visitors say they’re trying to prevent an apocalypse, and they want the family to make a terrible choice to stop it. Tremblay ratchets up the tension in each chapter, twisting our perception with mounting paranoia. We second-guessed ourselves 10 times before the book was over.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The apocalypse begins with a home invasion in this tripwire-taut horror thriller. Eric and Andrew are vacationing with their seven-year-old daughter, Wen, at remote Gaudet Lake in New Hampshire when their cabin is invaded by a quartet of weapons-wielding strangers, each of whom has been driven there by a shared vision: that the world will end unless one member of this family sacrifices another. That sets the stage for an excruciatingly tense standoff between them and their prisoners as they try to outmaneuver one other. Tremblay (Disappearance at Devil's Rock) skillfully seeds his tale with uncertainties, including news reports of portentous world catastrophes, that suggest the invaders' vision is genuine, and he introduces enough doubt into the beliefs and behaviors of all the parties to keep them and the reader off-balance. His profoundly unsettling novel invites readers to ask themselves whether, when faced with the unbelievable, they would do the unthinkable to prevent it.
Customer Reviews
Cabin at the End of the World
From the start of this book, foreboding filled me. Sweet little Wen is collecting grasshoppers and proves more lovable the more we learn about her. Then she makes a new friend who has traveled just to find her family at the remote cabin they’ve rented. He has brought three associates who fill Wen with the same foreboding. But who or what has brought these seven individuals together? And for what purpose?
WARNING: PROBABLE SPOILER: This book contains violence and cursing.
What?
The first half of this book was pretty good. Kept me in suspense. But then, Later on, toward the end, it was really weird how he was writing. One of the main characters Sabrina, was talking to Andrew, Eric, and Leonard. She was explaining to them why she was doing what she did. But it seemed like it switched back and forth from her explaining, to the author himself taking over And narrating for her, to her again. It was very weird and didn’t make any sense. And it dragged on longer than it needed to. It got boring and was hard for me to finish. I’m kinda upset that I wasted $14 on this book. Don’t waste your $$ on it.
not worth it
fairly interesting at first, but quickly unravels into an unoriginal bore.