Middle of the Night

Middle of the Night, the newest book by Riley Sager, is a chilling and atmospheric story that weaves past and present with wonderful tension and a growing list of suspects and theories that will keep readers guessing.

The story centres around a missing ten-year-old boy. Ethan and his best friend Billy regularly had backyard sleepovers camping in Ethan's backyard. Until the night Ethan wakes up to find a slash in the tent and Billy missing. Billy was never found, and Ethan remembers little from that night and his best friend's disappearance haunts him to this day. 

Thirty years later, Ethan returns to his parents' house on Hemlock Circle, the street where many of his childhood neighbours still reside. When odd things start happening to him, things only Billy would know, Ethan starts to question whether his friend is reaching out from 'beyond'. As his curiosity becomes obsession and his paranoia grows, readers will start to question whether Ethan knows what really happened to his best friend in the middle of the night thirty years ago.  

Sager gives his readers a page-turner of a read. He excels at providing a sinister setting to build his story, a host of potential culprits and he ups the creep factor with a nod to the paranormal and a mysterious place that lies just beyond the woods behind Hemlock Circle. 

This was an entertaining, bingeable suspense read with good red herrings, a creepy setting, and an unexpected poignant moment. While I would have liked even more supernatural elements, I appreciated how Sager incorporated themes of grief, guilt, and the emotional toll when you don't know what happened to a loved one and the reminder that you cannot outrun your past.

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to Penguin Random House Canada and Tandem Collective Global for the complimentary copy of this book which was given in exchange for my honest review as part of my first readalong.  

My Rating: 4 stars

Author: Riley Sager

Genre: Suspense

Type and Source: Hardcover from publisher 

via Tandem Collective Readalong

Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada

First Published: June 18, 2024

Book Description from GoodReads: 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.