Publication Date June 18, 2024
Riley Sager, I’ve done it again! About four years ago I reviewed Home Before Dark, and noted that I had requested it because I misread the author’s name and thought it was a different author whose work I had enjoyed. Oops. Oh well, I enjoyed it…enough. Now, thanks to Penguin Group Dutton and NetGalley, I had the opportunity to read Sager’s latest, Middle Of The Night (in exchange for my honest review).
It begins as a sort of suburban family drama set in an upscale suburb in New Jersey (next to Princeton), on a quiet cul-de-sac called Hemlock Circle. Thirty years ago, ten-year-old Ethan Marsh and his best friend Billy are “camping” in Ethan’s back yard and Ethan wakes up to find Billy gone. The tent had been sliced open and Billy had apparently been abducted, never seen again.
Since then, Ethan has been a chronic insomniac, plagued by a recurring nightmare about “the incident,” and when he returns to the house following his parents’ move to Florida, he is creeped out by weird things happening, and feeling…like Billy (or his ghost?) are present . WTF?
Ethan begins to investigate, and is reunited with his former childhood friends, neighbors, and memories.
A mysterious “Institute” that had been nearby when they were kids has closed, and no one really seems to know what kind of research was conducted there…paranormal activity? Did Ethan’s mom Joyce really work there until she was fired? And for what??
Back in the day, Ethan had a huge crush on his babysitter, Ashley, whose big dreams of leaving the neighborhood led her to move toward her “real goal… not to live like her mother and the other women of Hemlock Circle.” Now Ashley has returned to the neighborhood as well, with her son in tow. There is a lot about the family dynamics of the various folks on the street, including Ethan’s mom who had clearly been frustrated by her role as a stay-at-home-mom. She had loved working at the Institute…she “enjoyed the studious quiet of the place. It felt like working in a library.” OK, THAT made the retired librarian in me LOL, and I was slightly put off when some woo-woo passages made me cringe, thinking the story was going off the rails into the ghost story realm. But overall, it was a perfectly enjoyable, well-written story, with relatable characters. Totally held my interest, to the point that I stayed up HOURS past my usual bedtime, needing to know WHAT HAPPENED thirty years ago? Good stuff. Four solid stars.