August 26, 2024
Middle of the Night by Riley Sager
On a summer night in 1994, two 10 year old boys camp out in a tent in one of their backyards, as they did every Friday night. One of the boys disappears in the night, never to be seen again. Thirty years later, the surviving boy, now a 40 year old man, reluctantly returns to his childhood home. Almost immediately, strange things begin happening that indicate that someone knows what happened to the missing boy.
The premise was interesting, which is why I picked up this book: people who grew up on the same cul-de-sac reuniting as adults to solve the mystery of what happened to one of their friends. But the text got repetitious quickly: the reader is reminded every other page that Billy was taken in the middle of the night, that he was obsessed with ghosts, there are repeated descriptions of Ethan's dream, the lights coming on and off in the neighborhood, descriptions of the ominous mansion just a mile from where they lived. Lots of family secrets, but I didn't really care because the characters were flat and two-dimensional, and it took forever to reveal the secrets. Not terrible but not great, either. I started skimming about halfway through. Fans of Freida McFadden will enjoy Sager's latest novel. I think I'm done with both of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment