Paul Tremblay

A family is shaken to its core after the mysterious disappearance of a teenage boy in this eerie tale, a blend of literary fiction, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror from the author of A Head Full of Ghosts. “A Head Full of Ghosts scared the living hell out of me, and I’m pretty hard to scare,” raved Stephen King about Paul Tremblay’s previous novel. Now, Tremblay returns with another disturbing tale sure to unsettle readers. Late one summer night, Elizabeth Sanderson receives the devastating news that every mother fears: her thirteen-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished without a trace in the woods of a local park. The search isn’t yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her young daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend Tommy’s disappearance. Feeling helpless and alone, their sorrow is compounded by anger and frustration: the local and state police have uncovered no leads. Josh and Luis, the friends who were the last to see Tommy before he vanished, may not be telling the whole truth about that night in Borderland State Park, when they were supposedly hanging out a landmark the local teens have renamed Devil’s Rock. Living in an all-too-real nightmare, riddled with worry, pain, and guilt, Elizabeth is wholly unprepared for the strange series of events that follow. She believes a ghostly shadow of Tommy materializes in her bedroom, while Kate and other local residents claim to see a shadow peering through their windows in the dead of night. Then, random pages torn from Tommy’s journal begin to mysteriously appear—entries that reveal an introverted teenager obsessed with the phantasmagoric; the loss of his father, killed in a drunk-driving accident a decade earlier; a folktale involving the devil and the woods of Borderland; and a horrific incident that Tommy believed connects them. As the search grows more desperate, and the implications of what happened become more haunting and sinister, no one is prepared for the shocking truth about that night and Tommy’s disappearance at Devil’s Rock.

A Novel

Disappearance at Devil's Rock

Wynter

Ugh... Never thought there would come a day when I would give another 1-star rating to a book, but here it is. After reading the blurb I thought this novel would be a real treat. Little did I know that not much else was to happen beyond what was already exposed on the back of the jacket. A boy mysteriously disappears and his family is struggling to cope, and yeah... not much else.

I think this book failed due to wrong marketing and loss of identity. I was told this would be a horror novel. Not even close. While it had a slight supernatural angle, it really didn't feature enough to give you the spooks. There was no atmosphere built for a fright. It could have been a tight suspense thriller, but it's central mystery was as straightforward as it can get. There were really no loops or twists that threw you off balance. Your initial suspicions were pretty much the ending you get. Perhaps this novel was meant to be a family drama? That didn't work out for me either, because I disliked all of the characters and their unnecessary, illogical lying. If I was meant to spend all this time getting to know these characters, you'd think they would be sympathetic, charismatic, or complicated, which was not the case at all. 

I don't know. I should have DNF'ed it at 30% like I wanted to, but I really had hope that I'd be surprised in the end. Instead I trudged along through stilted dialogue *shudder*, banal plot, and insipid characters. I was curious about the author's other book, A Head Full of Ghosts, but I'm not sure I even care about it anymore.

Taylor

Paul Tremblay is so good at getting my heart rate up he should be my personal trainer. 

Also I literally gasped in two (2) different chapters of this book. That’s good horror 👌

Janice Hopper

I'd enjoyed this author's previous book "A Head Full of Ghosts" so I figured I'd probably like this one too. I was right.

The book starts off fairly simply. A teenager hanging out with a couple of friends disappears in a park at night. Is he a runaway? Was he abducted? His friends say he just ran off into the woods.

This relatively simple story doesn't stay simple for long. The whole book is a slow unpeeling of layers of narrative. Everything's revealed, bit by bit. One of the best things about the book is how it slowly unravels what happened to Tommy, and to his friends. 

There are hints that something paranormal MAY have happened here and there, but there's nothing explicit. 

Very well done, recommended. I listened to the whole thing almost straight through.

Maggie Gordon

A Head Full of Ghosts is one of my favourite horror novels of all time, and I picked up Disappearance at Devil's Rock expecting something similar. A Head Full of Ghosts this new book was not though, but Disappearance was enthralling in a completely different way. Once again, Tremblay plays a bit with the line between supernatural and normal. At its heart, however, Devil's Rock is not about ghosts or imaginary monsters. Though sometimes you want to believe that such things exist, the book is about the pedestrian types of bad things that happen to people. A Head Full of Ghosts makes you question what exactly is happening, but it does not end with the ambiguity of A Head Full of Ghosts. This swing towards reality does not make the book any less horrifying. It's a dark, tough story to read about what happens to a family when a child goes missing, and a frightening tale of stranger danger. 

Also, dear horror writers: please read and note Tremblay's use of technology. His people use social media and technology. It's refreshing in a genre that likes to set itself in times periods when cell phones didn't exist. That that historical horror is bad, but I really enjoy seeing stories in this genre embrace how horror can be written about in the techno-era.

Lauren Attaway

** spoiler alert **
           I've been fortunate lately to have discovered a lot of books that kept me reading late into the night. This book gets added on to that list. I couldn't finish this story fast enough and I genuinely cared what happened next. I was so tempted to skip to the end and I'm glad I didn't, because I would have ruined this for myself.

Witch

3.5 
I found this to be an interesting mystery piece that delved into the grief that occurs when your child goes missing. Parts were slow, but once the book got going I enjoyed the ride. It's not quite as "scary" as Head Full of Ghosts though. This is definitely more of a straightforward mystery that touches on occult rumours that tend to crop up when kids go missing in scary places.

Leafling

[3.5, rounded up]
Paul Tremblay, author of one of my favorite horror novels ever, is at it again with a new horror story with mystery/crime/thriller elements. Disappearance at Devil's Rock is about a very real horror: the disappearance of a child. After Tommy, a young teen, disappears in a park, and nobody seems to know why or how this happened. And then his mother is convinced she sees his ghost in the house. All sorts of weird shit goes down and I don't want to say much more than that plot-wise.

When I first finished this novel, I wasn't sure if I liked it or if I would categorize it as horror, though it definitely had horror elements. That was until I remembered that Paul Tremblay is totally a horror fan's writer. He had heavy allusions to several books/movies in Head Full of Ghosts, which led me to remember a favorite horror movie of mine, Lake Mungo. The plot of this book is heavily influenced by the Australian film: beloved teen goes missing, mom believes in ghost, sibling admits something, we eventually discover teen had secrets, doppelganger/future-seeing stuff. I'll stop my analysis before I spoil both film AND book.

What I'm trying to say is that having seen this movie made me completely understand what Tremblay was going for. I believe he was trying to recreate the slow burn pacing of the mockumentary film, because it has a very particular creepy tone. And, unfortunately, while I love the Lake Mungo plot similarities, I don't know if the pacing/tone was captured. Disappearance often just felt slow, regardless of whether some of the reveals and creepy bits were super intense and original, leaving them less scary for me. Another complaint some readers had were of too many Minecraft references. But as someone who teaches Minecraft, I can tell you that if anything Tremblay went light on them for the reader's sake. He captured awkward, annoying, approval-needing teen boys perfectly in this dark, eerie tale of the secrets people close to us keep.

Full Review: Outlandish Lit: Horror AND? 2 Books That Push Genre Boundaries

Disappearance at Devil's Rock A Novel

Reviews