Please note I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
This was honestly a nail biter of a horror story (pun intended, you will get that after you read about one of the main characters). I thought that it was nicely set up, Wendig did a good job of staying firmly in the past until he jumped forward again to the present, and the explanation behind the staircase was a scary and sad one all put together. I also give 2 thumbs up for the ending. I think we all know how this is going to end, but I liked that we were not shown it. I rather imagine it myself.
“The Staircase in the Woods” follows four former friends, Lore, Owen, Hamish, and Nick. The four of them have pretty much settled in their lives, if you can call it that until one day Lore calls Owen and tells him their friend Nick is dying of cancer. Nick just asks his four friends for one last get together. The four friends meet up eventually and confront the last time they were in the woods and the staircase they found that changed their lives forever.
The book mostly jumps back and forth between Owen and Lore, and then you get a few POVs via Hamish. I think that was smart since you understand that Owen and Lore have a lot of things left unsaid since the night in the woods and the things that came after. All four of the characters are messed up in their own way. I thought Wendig captured the mood of living in a small town and doing whatever you can to get out of it. He also captured the mood of teens being the misfits in the school and growing closer together.
I do think that the book at first feels a bit slow, but that’s really temporary. Once the plot kicks in, things go really fast and get scary. You don’t know how this ends and you worry about what it all means until things get revealed.
I did like the setting of this book. It was very much a puzzle and though there is a bit too much info dump on the staircase and how it came to be, it didn’t bother me at all. I liked learning about it.
The ending was bittersweet, heavy on the bitter.