Chuck Wendig: "The Staircase in the Woods" (ARC Review)

Title: The Staircase in the Woods [on Amazon | on Goodreads]
Series: None
Author: Chuck Wendig [Site | Goodreads]
Genres: Supernatural, Thriller/Mystery
Year: 2025
Age: 18+
Stars: 4/5
Pros: Brilliant, exciting twist on a popular urban legend and a beloved horror trope.
Cons: The characters aren't easy to like, for different reasons (though it's kind of the point). The political tirades feel random and out of place. The somehow-open ending may not sit well with some readers.
WARNING! Violence, hate speech, suicidal ideation, self-harm, sexual abuse (off-page), emotional abuse, parental abuse, parental neglect, drug and alcohol addiction, bullying, animal abuse. Lots of blood, gore and disturbing imagery, bug horror, vomiting.
Will appeal to: Those who enjoy mind-blowing (and hard-hitting) portal fantasies with a psychological angle. Those who like double-timeline narratives.

Blurb: Five high school friends are bonded by an oath to protect one another no matter what. Then, on a camping trip in the middle of the forest, they find something extraordinary: a mysterious staircase to nowhere. One friend walks up - and never comes back down. Then the staircase disappears. Twenty years later, the staircase has reappeared. Now the group returns to find the lost boy - and what lies beyond the staircase in the woods...(Amazon)

Review: First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Random House Worlds/Del Rey for providing a temporary ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

STAIR STRUCK

Apparently, staircases to nowhere in the middle of the woods aren't a rare sight, and in time have become an object of fascination spawning whole threads on sites like Reddit or Quora. Wendig drew on the urban legend according to which these staircases would be portals to other dimensions, wove it with a beloved horror trope (estranged childhood friends reunite to get closure and defeat an old evil), and produced a deliciously disturbing, nightmarishly captivating and completely addictive haunted-house maze, where friendships are tested and individuals must rise above their fears and flaws if they want to get out. (Mind you...don't expect actual ghosts - there are other ways for a house to be haunted...). Told in a now-and-then narrative across a twenty-something-years divide (the author references Covid, so I'd say, more like twenty-five than the twenty accounted for in the synopsis), the story introduces us to five friends who, as teens, swore an oath to always have each other's back, and after a drugged and drunken night in the woods when a member of the group vanished at the top of a supernatural staircase, slowly drifted apart, only to band together as adults in order to solve the mystery when a similar structure reappears.

Now, if you're into (hellish) supernatural mazes, literal twists and turns, videogame-style challenges and psychological horror, it doesn't get much better than this. Granted, this book is disturbing and gross at times (well, MOST times), but it's also creative and addictive and sort of exhilarating. The ending, while not coming with a pretty bow, gives you closure about the things that matter most. If it were only for these aspects, TSITW would be a 5-star read for me. [...]

CHARACTER FLAWS

Wendig's latest isn't just a horror romp, of course: it's got a huge focus on friendship, grief, guilt, trauma, and the difference 20+ years make for an once unbreakable bond and the individuals who used to share it. And it does deliver on that aspect, except the characters seem to do everything in their power to come across as edgy or unlikeable - at least until they finally start to open up and work like a cohesive unit to hopefully save Matty, and themselves on course. I get that they're damaged and are supposed to be flawed - it's part of what "makes" the book, after all - but they all have unpleasant quirks or attitudes that are hard to look past at times, and their younger versions, with all the drug and alcohol abuse, aren't necessarily better. The story is told from Owen's and Lore's perspectives, which helps with getting in their shoes, to an extent; on the other hand, the author could have done more with them - especially with Lore, who identifies as "genderfluid, pansexual, aromantic, Au/ADHD", but never really embraces any of those labels or elevates over being a sum of descriptors (if you don't count the post-threesome scene complete with sex toys at the start of the book, which doesn't strike me as good representation).

I have to address yet another issue, that is, the awkward political tirades - mind you, as a leftie, I share the author's views and sentiments, but I found such conversations (more like rants) to be ill-placed and heavy-handed. All in all though, TSITW is an entertaining (if dark and sometimes gross) piece of supernatural horror addressing very human, often complicated emotions, and with a strong focus on broken/repaired friendships, trauma and catharsis. Not to miss if you're a fan of haunting staircases, haunted houses and haunted people.

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Like this book? You might also be interested in Ryan Leslie: "The Between"; Dan Hanks: "The Way Up Is Death".